I’ve been a CNET journalist for over 14 years, testing everything from electric cars and bikes to cameras and, er, magic wands. But it’s phones that have always been my main focus and I’ve seen a lot of them come and go in my time here. Sure, we’ve had the mainstays like Apple and Samsung, but I’ve also seen the rise of brands like Xiaomi and OnePlus, while once-dominant names like BlackBerry, HTC and LG have vanished from the mobile space. 

I’ve seen phones arrive with such fanfare that they changed the face of the mobile industry, while others simply trickled into existence and disappeared just as uneventfully. But it’s the weird ones that stick in my memory. Those devices that tried to be different, that dared to offer features we didn’t even know we wanted or simply the ones that aimed to be quirky for the sake of quirky. Like someone who thinks an interesting hat is the same as having a personality. 

Here then are some of the weirdest phones I’ve come across in my mobile journey at CNET. Better yet, I still have them in a big box, so I was able to dig them out and take new photos — though not all of them still work. Let’s start with a doozy. 

BlackBerry Passport

At the height of its power RIM’s BlackBerry was one of the most dominant names in mobile. It was unthinkable then that anything could unseat the goliath, let alone that it would fade into total nonexistence. The once juicy, ripe BlackBerry withered and died on the bush, but not without a few interesting death rattles on its way.

My pick from the company’s end days is the Passport from 2014, notable not just for its physical keyboard but its almost completely square design. The rationale behind this, according to its maker, was that business types just really love squares. A Word document, an Excel spreadsheet, an email — all square (ish) and all able to be viewed natively on the Passport’s 4.5 inch display with its 1:1 aspect ratio. Let’s not forget that all Instagram posts at that time were also square so it had that going for it too. YouTube, not so much.

In theory it’s a sound idea. In practice the square design made it awkward to use, as the physical keyboard was too wide and narrow. Its BlackBerry 10 software, especially the app availability, lagged behind what you’d get from Android at the time. BlackBerry quickly ditched the new shape. After trying to claw back some credibility with its Android phones — including the stupidly named Priv, a phone I quite liked — and by bringing on singer Alicia Keys as Global Creative Director (because BlackBerry phones had keys, get it?) the company stopped making its own phones in 2016.

YotaPhone 2

You’d be forgiven for having never heard of this phone or its parent company, Yota. Based in Russia, Yota made two phones: the creatively named YotaPhone in 2012 and the similarly inspired YotaPhone 2 in 2014, pictured above. Both were unique in the mobile world for their use of a second display on the rear. From the front, these phones looked and operated like any other generic Android phone. Flip them over though and you’d get a 4.3-inch E Ink display.

The idea was that you’d use your Android phone as normal for things like web browsing, gaming or watching videos, but you’d switch to the rear display if you wanted to read ebooks or simply have it propped up to show incoming notifications. E Ink displays use almost no power, so it made a lot of sense to preserve battery life by viewing “slow” content on the back. 

The reality though is that beyond ebooks — which aren’t great to read on such a tiny screen anyway — there’s very little anyone might want to use an E Ink display for when out and about. It was difficult to operate, too, thanks to a slow processor and clunky software. After just two generations of YotaPhones, the company went into liquidation.

HTC ChaCha

Remember when Facebook was the cool place to be instead of just the place your parents and their friends go to publicly air their most troubling of opinions? When I was at university, instead of trading phone numbers when you met someone, the default thing was to add each other on Facebook and then begin poking each other. Facebook was so ubiquitous at the time that it was simply the way every single person I knew communicated. 

Keen to capitalise on Zuckerberg’s social media success, HTC brought out the ChaCha in 2011. The phone came with an utterly ludicrous name and a dedicated Facebook button on the bottom edge. Tapping this would immediately bring up your Facebook page, allowing you to post the lyrics to Rebecca Black’s Friday, ask what Fifty Shades of Grey is about or do whatever else it was we were all up to in 2011. 

Facebook might still be around in one form or another, but HTC abandoned its phone-making business back in 2018. Unsurprisingly, phones with dedicated hardware buttons tied to social media haven’t caught on.

Sirin Labs Finney U1

“Bro!” I hear you shout, all-too loudly. “BRO! You’ve got to check out what my Bitcoin is doing!” You’d then show me your phone and I’d watch while your crypto account plummeted, rebounded and plummeted again over the course of 12 seconds. The phone you’d be showing me, of course, would be the Sirin Labs Finney, a 2019 phone specifically targeted at crypto bros who wanted a device that would perfectly match their high-living, high-fiving crypto-trading lifestyle. 

At its core, the Finney is just another Android phone, but a hidden second screen pops up from the back of the phone, with the sole purpose of giving you secure access to your crypto wallet. The phone had a whole host of security features to ensure that only you could access your Bitcoin or Etherium, and it allowed you to send and receive cryptocurrency without having to use a third-party online platform. Apparently that was a good thing.

If you were entrenched in the crypto world, this phone might have been the dream. But the wallet wasn’t easy to use and the phone was expensive, thanks to the cost of that second screen. Sirin Labs stopped making phones soon after and the mobile industry learned an important lesson about not developing hyper-niche devices that aren’t even that well-suited for the handful of customers that might be interested.

Planet Computers Gemini PDA

Half phone, half laptop, all productivity. The Gemini PDA by UK-based mobile startup Planet Computers was a clamshell device in 2018 with a large (at the time) 5.99-inch display and a full qwerty keyboard. It was basically a slightly more modern interpretation of a PDA, like 1998’s Psion 3MX, in that it was effectively a tiny laptop that would fold up and fit in your pocket. The full keyboard allowed you to type away comfortably on long emails or documents while the regular Android software on the top half meant it also functioned like any other phone — apps, games, phone calls, whatever. 

It had 4G connectivity for fast data speeds and a later model even got an update to 5G. But, like the BlackBerry Passport, its focus on business-folk and productivity above all else meant it was a niche product that failed to garner enough appeal to succeed. It didn’t help that it was utterly enormous and fitting it in a jeans pocket was basically impossible, so it didn’t impress either as a laptop or as a phone. 

LG G5

LG remains a huge name in the tech industry today thanks to its TVs and appliances, but it also tried to be a big player in the phone world, too. I liked LG’s phones — they were quirky and often tried weird things which kept my days as a reviewer interesting, perhaps none more so than the LG G5 in 2016. 

LG called the G5 “modular,” meaning that the bottom chin of the phone snapped off allowing you to attach different modules such as a camera grip or an audio interface. Like many items on this list I can say that it’s a nice idea in theory, but in practice the phone fell short. Swapping out modules meant removing the battery, which of course meant restarting your phone every time you wanted to use the camera grip. 

It was an inelegant solution to a problem that never needed to exist. But its bigger issue was that the camera grip and audio interface were the only two modules LG actually made for the phone. It’s as though the company had this fun notion in creating a phone that can transform according to your needs but then forgot to assign anyone to come up with any ideas on what to do with it. As a result, the end product was uninspiring, over-engineered and expensive.  

Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung’s Galaxy Note series helped transform the mobile industry. It literally stretched the boundaries of phones, encouraging larger and larger screens — even creating the unpleasant and mercifully short-lived term “phablet.” But the first-generation model in 2011 was controversial, mostly due to what was then considered its enormous size. 

At 5.3 inches, it was significantly bigger than almost any other phone out there, including Samsung’s own Galaxy S2 — which, at a measly 4.3 inches, paled into insignificance against the mighty Note. It was mocked for being so huge, with memes appearing online poking fun at people holding it up when making calls. And while times have changed and we now have Samsung’s 6.9-inch Galaxy S25 Ultra, the original Note’s boxy aspect ratio meant it was actually wider than the S25 Ultra. So even by today’s standards it’s big.

It was also among the first phones to come with its own stylus shoved into its bottom. It’s a feature that few mobile companies have mimicked, but Samsung kept it as a differentiator on its later Note models before incorporating it into its flagship S line starting with the S22 Ultra. 

Nokia Lumia 1020

Nokia’s Lumia 1020 was my absolute favorite phone for quite some time after its launch in 2013. And it’s because of its weirdness. 

Nokia had an amazing history of bonkers mobiles — 2004’s 7280 “lipstick phone,” for example — and while the Lumia range was much more sedate, the 1020 had a few things that made it stand out. First, it ran Windows Phone, Microsoft’s brief and unsuccessful attempt to launch a rival to Android and iOS. A rival that I happened to quite like. 

It was also made of polycarbonate, with a smoothly rounded unibody design that strongly contrasted the angular metal, plastic and glass designs of almost all other phones launching at that time. Its look was unlike anything else on sale, and I loved it.

But the main thing I loved was its camera. With a 41-megapixel sensor, Carl Zeiss lens, raw image capture and optical image stabilization, the Lumia 1020 packed the best camera specs of any phone I’d ever seen. It made the phone a true standout product, especially for photographers like me who wanted an amazing camera with them at all times, but didn’t want to have to carry both a phone and a compact digital camera. 

While incredible image quality from a phone is a given in almost all camera phones in 2026, the Lumia 1020 was an early pioneer in what could be achieved from a phone camera. 

LG G4

LG, twice in one list? Oh yes, my friend, because the G5 seen above was not the first time LG went weird. Launched in 2015, the LG G4 had two main features that raised a few eyebrows. Most notably was LG’s decision to wrap the phone in real leather. Yes, real actual leather. Like what you’d get when you peel a cow. It even had stitching down the back, making it look like a handbag or a boot.

While it’s not a phone for vegans, I actually liked the look, especially as real leather — even the really thin stuff LG used on the G4 — naturally wears over time, gaining scuffs and scratches that give each phone a unique patina. It’s why I love my old leather Danner boots, and it’s why a vintage, worn-in leather jacket will almost always look better than a brand new one. Still, with leather being an expensive — and arguably controversial — material to use on a phone, it’s no surprise LG didn’t return to this idea.

But it’s not the only weird thing about the phone — the G4 was among a small number of phones released around that time that experimented with curved displays. It’s gently bent into a banana shape, the theory being that it makes watching videos more immersive, as is the case with curved screens in movie theaters. The problem is that movie screens are immense, so that curve makes sense. On a 5.5 inch phone like the G4, that curve is barely noticeable and only really served to push the price up. 

Motorola Moto X and Moto Maker

I’ve just pointed out how weird the LG G4 was for using leather and now I’m pointing out another phone that, as you can see in the image above, is also wrapped in leather. But the weird thing here isn’t that the Motorola Moto X came in leather — it’s that I personally got to choose that it came in leather. 

With the Moto X in 2013, Motorola launched a service called Moto Maker that allowed you to customize your phone in a wild variety of ways. From different-colored backs and multicolored accents around the camera and speakers through to using materials including leather and even various types of wood, there were loads of options to make your Moto X look unique. Each phone would then be made to order and you could even have it personalised with lazer etching and provide your Google account for it to be prelinked on arrival. 

If custom-making phones with a vast number of potential options en mass sounds like an absolute logistical nightmare then you’re on the same page as Motorola eventually found itself. Moto Maker only existed for a few years before the company retired its customization service. 

Samsung Galaxy Fold

I’m ending on a wildcard addition with the original Galaxy Fold. It’s a wildcard because Samsung’s Fold and Flip range are now up to number seven and we’ve got foldable devices from almost all major Android manufacturers. Though still not Apple. 

While the original Fold might have kicked off the foldable revolution, there’s no question it was a weird phone. I was among the first to test it in the world when it launched in 2019 and while I was certainly impressed by the bendy display, its hinge felt weird and “snappy” to use. The outer display was, let’s face it, terrible. 

On paper its 4.6-inch size is reasonable, but it’s so tall and narrow that it was borderline unusable for anything more than checking incoming notifications. Trying to type on it meant whittling down your thumbs to pointy nubs so I spent most of my time interacting with the phone’s much bigger internal screen. Cut to today when the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s outer screen measures a healthier 6.7 inches and as a result can function like any regular smartphone, with the bigger inside screen only required when you want more immersive content.

Looking back at the original Fold and its bizarre proportions, it’s honestly a surprise that Samsung persisted with the format. But I’m glad it did.

Watch this: Galaxy Fold makes its case for the future

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