5. Kyocera Echo
Kyocera has never been a big player in the market for mobile phones, but it has been producing them for more than two decades. Many of their phones over the years have relied on being unique or niche offerings to differentiate them from the competition. One such attempt at offering a novel device that fits into its own category is the Echo, a dual-screen smartphone released in 2011.
The novelty of the dual screens comes up as its most unique identifying feature as the hardware supporting the phone was not necessarily premium level for its time. Furthermore, Android had not yet been developed to run dual screens natively, so the OS and a few apps had to be tweaked to run on it. Therefore, the performance of the software ends up being mediocre and with plenty of room for improvement.
6. Samsung Galaxy Fold
The Galaxy fold accomplished what seemed impossible, to fold a screen in half. To make this happen, Samsung used plastic, and that created problems from the start. We reported on problems when people in the press started peeling off what looked like protective film typical on new devices, only to find out they were pulling away the top layer of the screen. Others found their units with peculiar bulges along the seam and more still discovered thick black lines running from hinge to hinge.