The Minimal Phone is a modern phone with a retro aesthetic. Instead of a big color display that covers the whole device, it has a small 4.3 inch black and white E Ink display and a physical QWERTY keyboard that offers tactile feedback when you type.

First introduced last year, the phone’s developers raised over $600,000 through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, and now the company has begun shipping the Minimal Phone to backers. If you missed out on crowdfunding you can still pre-order one for $399 through Indiegogo InDemand or from the Minimal website – new orders placed today are expected to ship by March.

In some ways the appeal of a phone like the Minimal Phone is that it does less than other phones, not more. The E Ink display provides a distraction-free space for reading information, eBooks, or other static content.

It’s also a low-power screen that’s easily visible in direct sunlight and which only consumes power when the image on the display changes. But it has a slow screen refresh rate, which makes it less than ideal for watching videos, playing games, or other actions.

That said, unlike some other phones for distraction-free, basic usage, the Minimal Phone does ship with an Android 14-based operating system and access to Google apps and services, including the Google Play Store. So you should be able to install third-party apps. Just keep in mind that some will work better than others on this device.

The phone is powered by a MediaTek MT6769 processor with two AMR Cortex-A75 cores, six Cortex-A55 cores, and Mali-G57 MP2 graphics and has 6GB of LPDDR4XRAM, 128GB of storage, and a 3,000 mAh battery that should be good for several days of light usage. The phone also supports 15W Qi wireless charging.

The display is a 600 x 800 pixel touchscreen E Ink display with a 4:3 aspect ratio and 230 pixels per inch. There’s a front light that shines onto the display to make it easier to see in dark or dimly lit environments, but you can also turn off the light when you don’t need it.

On the right side of the phone there are volume up and down buttons as well as an E Ink refresh button. On the left there’s a power button with a built-in fingerprint sensor. And the keyboard below the phone features 35 keys including one hotkey, 0.15mm key travel.

There’s a USB-C port, speaker, and 3.5mm audio jack on the bottom of the phone, and a 16MP rear camera with an LED flash on the back and the phone has a microSD card slot for removable storage.

Following the crowdfunding campaign, the Minimal Company refined the design of the phone a little bit based on feedback from the community and made a few changes.

One change? The Minimal Phone is available with or without a front-facing camera. Some folks looking for a distraction-free device are particularly sensitive to privacy concerns and prefer not to have a camera pointing toward them every time they pick up the phone. Incidentally, the camera is also in the lower left corner of the phone on models that have a selfie camera, which is sort of an awkward place for a front camera since it would be covered by your hands if you were typing.

Another change is that the phone is available in three color options: Pebble (grey), Onyx (black), and Fusion (a little from columns A and B).

Other features include support for WiFi 5, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and 4G LTE. The Minimal Phone does not support 5G.

The Minimal Phone measures 142 x 78 x 8.6mm (5.59″ x 3.07″ x 0.34″).

To get a sense of what it’s like using the phone, check out this video from YouTuber aka The Viking: