Top 10 Worst Smartphones Ever

Let’s face it, in the early aughts, phone manufacturers were still trying to figure out exactly what people wanted from their devices. One such contraption was the Toshiba G450. Is it an MP3 player, a phone, or a USB stick? Apparently it was all three, but with one of the most peculiar designs ever seen. One look at this gadget and you’d likely never guess it was ever intended to be a phone at all. With a ridiculous circular dialpad, even just trying to put a number in was tedious. And the fact that some buttons arbitrarily change functions depending on what screen you were on made things worse. No thanks Toshiba. Stick to laptops.

Today, many vehicles leverage the power of their own mapping tech, or apps like Google Maps for navigation. But Garmin made quite a name for themselves as a supplier of high quality outdoor GPS systems, as well as in-car navigation. Garmin released the Asus Garminfone, followed by several other attempts to capture their slice of the smartphone market. Unfortunately, their lack of experience in this space was clearly evident in their devices. Poor battery life, a clunky interface, and a subpar camera were contributing factors to this phone’s failure. Garmin bailed on their smartphone attempts by mid-2010.

If Apple and Samsung are the Gucci and Louis Vuitton of smartphones, then Pantech is probably closer to a Walmart or Target. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with their devices, but they don’t always measure up to many others in today’s market. One such device was the Jest. Aside from its slideout keyboard, the most remarkable thing about this option is how truly generic it is. There’s nothing inherently bad about the phone. It just comes off as more of an electronic version of “meh.” As of today, Pantech no longer makes cell phones and perhaps that’s for the better.

Do you remember when 3D was all the rave? Movies, TV, and even game systems were trying to cash in on the 3D trend. We can look back now and see how short sighted much of this was but at the time, everyone thought it was going to be the “next big thing.” HTC, a fairly reputable cell phone manufacturer, tried to introduce 3D tech into their phones with the HTC Evo 3D. Its camera was supposed to be able to take 3D photos you could see without glasses. Yet much like the 3D TV experience, much of what customers got was underwhelming. Aside from the gimmick, the phones themselves lacked anything notable proving that a single feature does not make a phone great.

No one will ever argue that Microsoft has put out some stinkers over the years. But their Kin line of phones brings failure to a whole new level. To call them “smart” phones is a bit of a misnomer given that all it was really intended for was messaging on apps like Facebook and Twitter (sorry, X). A small screen with a limited slide-out keyboard failed to impress anyone. Apparently even internal focus groups said the devices were terrible, but the company pushed ahead anyway. Clearly those groups were right as it only took a couple of months for Microsoft to pull the plug on the whole thing.

For a time, it seemed that one popular social network was obsessed with creating the “Facebook phone.” One such attempt was the HTC First. It was the first (heh, get it?) device to make use of Facebook Home. Essentially it was a re-skinned version of the Android home and lock screen, made to integrate with much of Facebook’s features. This was supposed to be the hook to get users to buy the device, but instead, all it did was irritate them. The lackluster hardware, combined with the excessive bloatware apps pushed the phone out of the market, and forced Facebook to look elsewhere.

Years from now, business students will learn how even companies at the top of their game can crumble for a lack of insight. Blackberry was the mobile device of choice with business users for years. But the release of the iPhone in 2007 changed everything. Research in Motion, the company behind Blackberry, scrambled to come up with a viable competitor and gave us the Blackberry Storm. Dumping their fan-favorite physical keyboard for a virtual one, it became overwhelmingly clear Blackberry was not great at software development. Between the buggy touchscreen and terrible app experience, the phone was hated by everyone. They tried to fix their issues with the Z10 but it was too late. Apple & Android had won this market.

Will companies ever learn that sometimes you should just stay in your own lane? The Amazon Fire Phone was another example of a company trying to release a mobile device aimed exclusively at promoting its other services. Facebook had failed the year before and in 2014, Amazon found themselves in a similar situation. Perhaps the biggest mistake they made with this Android device was forcing users to go through Amazon’s own “app store.” Google Play was purposely locked out of the devices, forcing users to find little to nothing in the way of the apps they wanted. A year later, production ceased on the device and no one has missed it since.

We’re pretty sure that Samsung should have used Amazon’s naming for this device. The “Samsung Galaxy Fire Phone” would have been a far more adept description of the smartphone. Typically known for their high quality devices, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was by all accounts, a fantastic smartphone, except for one small problem: it was prone to spontaneously bursting into flames. You know it has to be bad when the US Department of Transportation officially bans a phone from being brought onto an aircraft. Once news broke of how dangerous these could be, Samsung pulled the plug and managed to recover, continuing to produce great products since.

Nokia might have given us the unkillable model 3310, but they’ve certainly had their share of misses over the years. Exactly what were they thinking when they tried to combine gaming and smartphone tech with the N-Gage? The real question mark, though, comes from their 7280 model released in 2004. Nicknamed the “lipstick” phone from its shape, it looked more like an MP3 player than a phone. More notably, it had no dialpad. Instead, it featured a circular control that was some sort of hybrid child between a rotary dial telephone and an iPod controller. Although featured in a few music videos, the phone’s poor interface killed any chance it had. Have you ever owned a terrible smartphone? Did we miss it on this list? Let us know how terrible it was down in the comments.