The Minimal Phone 2 Drops E Ink for OLED — Which Is the Whole Story

The original Minimal Phone was a strange, likeable thing: a 4.3-inch E Ink panel, a real QWERTY keyboard under your thumbs, Android underneath, and a battery that went four days because a screen made of electronic paper barely draws power. It cost $499. It was slow, and that was arguably the point — an interface that refuses to be fun to scroll is an interface you put down.

The Minimal Company has now announced the Minimal Phone 2. It is smaller, it is aluminium, the keyboard is better — and it has dropped E Ink for OLED.

That single change is the whole story, and it deserves more scrutiny than a press release will give it.

First, the honest part: this is not a launch

There is no price. No release date. No full spec sheet. The company's own page says "coming soon…" and offers a waitlist with early-bird pricing. What exists publicly is two company-made announcement videos and a handful of hands-on impressions.

We are not giving this a verdict badge, and we will not until it ships with a price attached. A phone you cannot buy cannot be recommended.

What is actually confirmed

• OLED display, replacing the E Ink panel — confirmed across coverage
• 5G
• Physical QWERTY keyboard, redesigned with tighter key spacing and better tactile response
• Aluminium body, matte finish, in black and silver
• Smaller than the first generation
• Upgraded CPU and a rebuilt operating system — the company's claim, unquantified
• Fingerprint reader in the side power button

What is not confirmed — and one contradiction

Almost everything else: processor, RAM, storage, battery capacity, camera resolution, screen size, weight, price, ship date.

One detail is worth flagging because reports disagree. Some hands-on coverage describes a top-mounted 3.5mm headphone jack; Notebookcheck reports the opposite — that the jack has been removed relative to generation one. Both cannot be true. If a wired headphone socket matters to you, treat it as unknown until the spec sheet lands.

Dimensions of 122.6 × 72 × 9.48 mm have circulated, but Notebookcheck lists dimensions as undisclosed. Same caution applies.

The E Ink question

Here is where opinion starts, and we will be plain about it.

Dropping E Ink fixes the first phone's worst flaw and removes its best argument at the same time.

E Ink on the MP01 meant ghosting, sluggish refresh, and an experience that made any app more effortful than it needed to be. Maps were painful. Anything animated was worse. Reviewers consistently praised the idea and warned about the responsiveness.

But E Ink also delivered the four-day battery, the sunlight legibility, and — most importantly — the friction that made the phone do what it promised. A device that is mildly unpleasant to browse on is a device you stop browsing on. That was not a bug in a "digital detox" phone. It was the mechanism.

Swap in OLED and you get a responsive, pretty, fast screen. You also get a small Android phone with a keyboard — which is a lovely thing, but it is a different product, competing with different phones, and the discipline now has to come from software rather than physics.

The company says the OS has been rebuilt to be "faster, calmer, and more intentional". Whether calm survives contact with a colour OLED is the question the reviews will have to answer.

Watch the announcement

Both videos below are The Minimal Company's own, not independent reviews — treat them as marketing, and wait for third-party testing before drawing conclusions about battery life or speed.

Video: Introducing The Minimal Phone 2 by The Minimal Company. Embedded with credit — watch and subscribe on their channel.

Video: Minimal Phone 2 — Designed for Focus by The Minimal Company. Embedded with credit.

What this means if you are in Pakistan

Bluntly: it is not sold here, and there is no indication that will change. The Minimal Company is a small direct-to-consumer operation. There is no local distributor, no service centre, and no official warranty path.

If you import one, three things follow:

1. PTA registration. Any phone used on a Pakistani network beyond the grace window has to be registered, and the duty on a device in this class is not trivial. Run the numbers on our PTA tax calculator before you order, not after it clears customs.
2. No warranty and no repairs. A cracked screen or a dead board on a niche import means shipping it back internationally, if the company will even accept it. There is no Hafeez Center counter for this.
3. Resale is thin. Selling a phone almost nobody in the country has heard of takes a long time. Price that in.

For most people here, the better version of this idea already exists locally and costs a fraction: buy a cheap second phone, put a SIM in it, and leave the smartphone at home when you want quiet. The budget phones on Harib will do the job for a few thousand rupees.

Our take

The first Minimal Phone was a genuinely interesting object with a real flaw. The second one appears to have fixed the flaw by removing the reason the phone existed — and we say "appears" deliberately, because there is no price, no spec sheet and no ship date to judge it by.

If you are the kind of person who has wanted a modern QWERTY Android phone for a decade, keep an eye on it; that itch is real and almost nobody is scratching it. If you wanted an E Ink phone specifically, the MP01 is still the one you want, and this is not its successor so much as its replacement by something else.

We will revisit this when it ships, with a price and independent testing. Until then, waitlists are free and opinions are cheap.

---

This device is not officially available in Pakistan. Specifications are unconfirmed and drawn from the manufacturer's announcement and early hands-on coverage; several details are disputed between sources and are flagged as such above. Always confirm PTA status and total landed cost before importing.