The square-ish phone that I wanted to love
The square-ish phone that I wanted to love
我本想爱上这款方方正正的手机
The charming Ikko MindOne Pro isn’t all it’s shaped up to be. 这款迷人的 Ikko MindOne Pro 并不像它外表看起来那么完美。
Allison Johnson is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview. Allison Johnson 是一位拥有十多年消费电子产品撰稿经验的资深评测员。她对移动摄影和电信领域有着浓厚的兴趣。此前，她曾在 DPReview 工作。
The Ikko MindOne Pro is delightfully small. I keep calling it a square phone, which isn’t quite right; the screen is square, but the phone itself is slightly rectangular. The camera flips up so you can use it for selfies — you can even open it partway to use as a stand or a kind of PopSocket. There’s a Clicks-style keyboard accessory that also adds a magnetic ring and a headphone jack. I tried so hard to like it, but this phone is a miss no matter how you look at it. Ikko MindOne Pro 小巧得令人愉悦。我一直称它为“方形手机”，但这并不完全准确；它的屏幕是正方形的，但手机本身略呈长方形。摄像头可以翻转，方便你进行自拍——你甚至可以将它半开，当作支架或类似 PopSocket 的气囊支架使用。它还有一个 Clicks 风格的键盘配件，增加了磁吸环和耳机插孔。我非常努力地想去喜欢它，但无论从哪个角度看，这款手机都令人失望。
I used it like a normal phone. I downloaded a minimalist launcher and tried using it as kind of a dumb phone. I put the keyboard case on. I took the keyboard case off. Nothing feels quite right. 我像使用普通手机一样使用它。我下载了一个极简启动器，试图把它当作“功能机”来用。我装上键盘壳，又拆下键盘壳。但无论怎么折腾，感觉都不对劲。
Hip to be square. I first met the MindOne Pro at CES back in January. It’s made by Ikko, a company based in Shenzhen that has mainly produced earbuds and audio accessories until now. The MindOne Pro is the company’s take on a small smartphone, or an AI gadget, or… both I guess. It ships globally and is priced at $499, though it’s currently marked down to $429 on the company’s website. 方正即潮流。我第一次见到 MindOne Pro 是在今年一月的 CES 展会上。它由总部位于深圳的 Ikko 公司制造，该公司此前主要生产耳机和音频配件。MindOne Pro 是该公司对小型智能手机或 AI 设备的尝试，或者……我想两者皆有。它面向全球发售，定价为 499 美元，不过目前在公司官网上已降价至 429 美元。
As charming as the hardware is, I noticed some yellow flags right off the bat when it got significantly warm as I was setting it up. Initial setup is always a lot for a phone’s processor to chew through, but the MindOne got noticeably hotter on that first day out of the box than most phones I use. A week later it has settled down a bit, though it doesn’t take much to warm it up again. 尽管硬件设计很迷人，但我在设置过程中发现它明显发热，这让我立刻警觉起来。虽然手机的初始设置对处理器来说总是负担较重，但 MindOne 在开箱第一天的发热程度明显高于我使用过的大多数手机。一周后，情况有所好转，但只要稍微使用，它还是很容易发热。
The flip-up main camera does double duty for selfies. It also acts as a kickstand, which honestly rules. 翻转式主摄像头兼具自拍功能。它还可以当作支架使用，说实话，这真的很棒。
Battery life is also pretty dismal. I watched it drop from the mid 90 percents to the 60s over the course of an hour and a half, and I wasn’t doing anything super taxing. Scrolling through reels, surfing around on Google Maps, and streaming some music — all over Wi-Fi — was enough to eat through a third of the phone’s battery in less than two hours. That doesn’t feel great. 电池续航也非常糟糕。我看着它在短短一个半小时内从 90% 多掉到了 60% 多，而我并没有进行任何高负载操作。仅仅是刷刷短视频、用 Google Maps 导航以及在线听音乐（全程使用 Wi-Fi），不到两小时就耗掉了三分之一的电量。这感觉真的很不好。
The bad news just keeps coming. The novel camera design is a good idea, but the camera itself just stinks. Color processing is all over the place. It usually handles daylight okay, but photos taken under dim indoor lighting look too green. 坏消息接踵而至。新颖的摄像头设计是个好主意，但摄像头本身的素质实在太差。色彩处理非常混乱。它在日光下表现尚可，但在昏暗的室内光线下拍摄的照片看起来绿得离谱。
The phone’s square screen is nice in theory — at least until you remember that the mobile web is built for vertical rectangles. The phone’s default behavior is to fill the entire screen area, which means cropping into the middle of vertical videos and websites. It’s not ideal and the onscreen keyboard fills up more than half the display area. 这款手机的方形屏幕在理论上很不错——直到你意识到移动互联网是为垂直长方形设计的。手机的默认设置是填满整个屏幕区域，这意味着它会裁剪掉垂直视频和网页的中间部分。这并不理想，而且屏幕键盘会占据超过一半的显示区域。
Thankfully, Ikko includes some controls in the quick settings shade to help mitigate this. There’s a toggle for resolution, which fits more content onto the screen, and a toggle to change the display to a vertical aspect ratio with black bars on the sides of the screen. It’s helpful for the occasions when you run into text boxes and date pickers that just don’t work on the square screen, though it means you’re dealing with a smaller display area inside of an already small display. 好在 Ikko 在快捷设置栏中加入了一些控制选项来缓解这一问题。有一个分辨率切换开关，可以在屏幕上显示更多内容；还有一个切换开关，可以将显示比例改为垂直比例，并在屏幕两侧留出黑边。这在遇到无法在方形屏幕上正常工作的文本框和日期选择器时很有帮助，尽管这意味着你不得不在本就狭小的屏幕里使用更小的显示区域。
Maybe that’s the point, though. I can appreciate the MindOne more if I look at it as a minimalist phone or an alternative phone to use on weekends. I like the idea of something like a Light phone that simply doesn’t run the mind-numbing apps like Instagram that I can’t seem to quit. But sometimes you need an Uber app, so I have trouble with all-in minimalist phones that feel too limited. The MindOne could be an alternative — sure, you can open the Instagram app, but it’s such a bad experience maybe you’ll do it less. Maybe I lack willpower, but I found myself scrolling Instagram just as often, except having a worse time. The best minimalist phone is a cellular smartwatch, etc. etc. 也许这正是它的意义所在。如果我把它看作一款极简手机或周末使用的备用机，我或许更能欣赏 MindOne。我喜欢像 Light Phone 那样的理念，即不运行那些让我欲罢不能、消磨心智的社交应用（如 Instagram）。但有时你确实需要 Uber 这样的应用，所以我对那些功能过于受限的“全能型”极简手机感到困扰。MindOne 或许是一个替代方案——当然，你可以打开 Instagram，但糟糕的体验可能会让你减少使用频率。也许是我意志力薄弱，我发现自己刷 Instagram 的频率并没有变，只是体验变得更差了。最好的极简手机其实是蜂窝版智能手表，等等。
I even have a hard time recommending the keyboard case. Again, it seems great in theory. There’s a little battery inside and you can flip a switch to have it charge the phone up while you use it. But somehow the keys are more fiddly than just typing with the onscreen keyboard. Maybe I’m just out of practice because I swear I was pretty fast on my Blackberry Curve, but I actually found it to be slower and fussier than virtual keys. The headphone jack is a thoughtful touch, though. 我甚至很难推荐那个键盘壳。同样，它在理论上看起来很棒。里面有一个小电池，你可以拨动开关，在使用的同时为手机充电。但不知为何，这些按键比屏幕键盘更难用。也许是我生疏了，因为我敢发誓我以前用黑莓 Curve 打字很快，但实际上我发现它比虚拟键盘更慢、更繁琐。不过，耳机插孔的设计确实很贴心。
There’s a whole other launcher on the MindOne Pro dedicated to AI apps that I’m not sure I get the point of. It offers a chatbot that allows you to switch between LLMs, as well as a notes app. Ikko being a Chinese company, I wondered how it would handle questions that the Chinese government might not like. I asked it if Hong Kong is part of China; it responded in Spanish for some reason and said that it couldn’t help me with my question. It even comes with a global eSIM that you can toggle on — it’s free to use with the AI launcher, but you need to pay to use it for messaging and the like. The connection is slow, at least in my neck of the woods in Seattle. MindOne Pro 上还有一个专门用于 AI 应用的启动器，我不太明白它的意义何在。它提供了一个可以在不同大模型（LLM）之间切换的聊天机器人，以及一个笔记应用。由于 Ikko 是一家中国公司，我很好奇它会如何处理中国政府可能不喜欢的敏感问题。我问它香港是否是中国的一部分；它不知为何用西班牙语回答说无法回答我的问题。它甚至还自带一个可以开启的全球 eSIM——配合 AI 启动器使用是免费的，但用于发送消息等功能则需要付费。至少在我所在的西雅图地区，连接速度很慢。
You can’t deny that this is an appealing-looking phone. As charming as the concept is, I think a phone this shape was always going to have a tough time. Fighting to look at webpages and apps built for rectangles through a square-shaped window is just a losing battle. Maybe instead of a square-ish phone what the world really needs is a small, rectangular phone with modern bells and whistles. You hear that, phone makers? I am begging literally any company to make the iPhone Mini again. 不可否认，这是一款外观很有吸引力的手机。尽管这个概念很迷人，但我认为这种形状的手机注定会举步维艰。透过方形窗口去浏览为长方形设计的网页和应用，注定是一场徒劳的战斗。也许世界真正需要的不是方方正正的手机，而是一款配备现代尖端功能的小型长方形手机。手机厂商们，你们听到了吗？我真的在恳求任何一家公司重新推出 iPhone Mini。