Anti-Smartphone Gadgets Are Selling Out, and the Numbers Prove It

By Grace Kim

A Hong Kong startup has sold more than 50,000 RePod units since July. Ikko's MindOne drew 3,411 Kickstarter backers who pledged nearly $1.5 million. And Meadow's first two preorder batches sold out, with a second production run now underway, according to founder Shreyas Narlanka.

A small but growing class of devices wants to break our smartphone dependence — and buyers keep showing up. The lineup includes Meadow, a 3-inch square screen from 25-year-old Narlanka; Ikko's MindOne Pro, a card-size Android phone with a 4.02-inch nearly square display; Freckle, a kids' phone; the Light Flip phone; and RePod, an aluminum case that turns strapless Apple Watches into iPhone-iPod hybrids.

Narlanka dropped out of the University of California, San Diego, where he studied cognitive science focused on human-computer interaction. He sold a previous startup — an e-commerce and inventory platform for sneaker and collectible resellers — then set out to build a phone designed to stop you from using your phone.

What did the first prototype teach Meadow's founders?

It failed. "We started with a prototype that was basically a small smartphone, shrunken down like an iPhone mini, but it didn't feel any different," Narlanka said. His team still treated it like a smartphone: "We still checked it like a smartphone. We pulled it out and tried to scroll it."

The fix wasn't the square shape itself, but what the shape lets users refuse. Since almost every app is drawn for a tall rectangle, the square resets smartphone-trained brains. "It doesn't look like an iPod. It doesn't look like a phone," Narlanka said. "So people naturally go, 'Oh, what is that?'"

Meadow also limited the software. It ships with calls and texts, navigation, Uber, Strava, Spotify, Apple Music, a camera, location sharing, notes, memo recording and a QR code display. A first software update added voice dictation, swipe typing and an optional ringtone. There's no browser, no social media, no Instagram, no TikTok.

The Spotify and Apple Music apps run untouched under the hood; Meadow tweaks the interface using Android's layered architecture. "If you go a level deeper into Android, you can actually affect how things are rendered out, how text is laid out," Narlanka said.

His reasoning is blunt: "When you have an app and you can just freely download any app and you have hundreds on your phone, it makes it a really anxiety-inducing thing. When you're bored, you'll naturally go toggle between the apps."

Why does friction separate Meadow from Ikko?

Ikko, based in Shenzhen and best known for earbuds, sells the $500 MindOne Pro, which lets users install anything. The results are messy, according to reviewers. Chinese gadget site Sspai praised the workmanship as "quite exquisite" but found even Ikko's own phone and messaging apps poorly adapted to the square screen. The Verge's Allison Johnson wrote that "fighting to look at webpages and apps built for rectangles through a square-shaped window is just a losing battle."

Meadow, by contrast, designs friction in deliberately. There's no scrollable inbox. "To text someone, you have to actually go into the contact and click 'message,'" Narlanka said. There's no front camera — just a small mirror beside the rear lens — and you get one glance at each photo before it locks until Wi-Fi sync. "You're not scrolling your camera roll," he said. "You're actually living life."

Light, which pushed digital detox with its first "dumb" phone in 2015, took a middle path: a software developer kit released a few months before the Light Flip launch, letting third parties build focused tools. Its curated store forbids infinite scrolling, app monetization and social media.

Can an old Apple Watch become an iPod?

Techpod, the Hong Kong maker of RePod, thinks so. The RePod C1 starts at $60 and wraps a strapless Apple Watch in a fourth-generation iPod nano-style case with a physical spinning wheel that mechanically rotates the Watch's Digital Crown. Founder Kore says it's for people who "want to stay connected without constantly reaching for a full-size smartphone and getting pulled into messages and social feeds." An LTE-enabled Watch inside makes a "mini iPhone mini."

Techpod tried Bluetooth controls first, "but the experience wasn't good enough," Kore said. Physical controls demanded "extremely tight tolerances," several manufacturing partners, a year of refining, and seven case versions for different Watch sizes. His slogan: "Less scrolling, more spinning."

What's the catch?

Meadow isn't a phone replacement, Narlanka admits: "It's just you leave your phone at home and take this when you want to unplug." At $448 plus a mandatory U.S.-only T-Mobile plan of $15 to $35 a month, that's a big ask — and Light's SDK, plus Meadow's later addition of texting, suggest the friction keeps getting sanded down.

Still, the math matters: sold-out preorders, 50,000 RePods and $1.5 million in crowdfunding show real demand for devices that prove phone habits designed in can be designed out.