This business card-sized Japanese phone bucks the giant-phone trend

Kyocera

With Apple and most Android OEMs making increasingly larger phones while Apple discontinues the small iPhone SE, it’s pretty clear where the smartphone market is going—at least for the near term. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some companies bucking the trend by going smaller, not bigger. Earlier this week, we heard that Palm’s brand is rebooting with a very small phone that’s not meant to be your main portable computing device. But this phone from Kyocera is even smaller.

The Japanese company has been producing unusual phone designs off and on for years, like a Nintendo DS-like dual-screen handset in the early Android days. The latest experiment is the KY-O1L, a phone that would likely fit in one of the credit card slots in your wallet or purse. We said the Palm phone was “about the size of a credit card,” and that was true—except in depth. This phone is a little closer to that goalpost in depth. Unfortunately, it’s only being released in Japan—but it’s an interesting concept to see even if you’re not in that region.