The 12 Ugliest Phones of the Mobile Era

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Over the course of the past few years, phones have largely settled on a singular design: thin slates with as few buttons as possible and not much else, and sometimes in colors. Most phones seem to play it safe, sticking to designs that work with a few variations to fit the manufacturer's design language. Sometimes, though, there are a few phones that try something different and end up failing spectacularly. Those are the phones on the shelves in stores that make you wonder what the company was thinking, or why anyone would ever buy a phone that ugly. Here's are 12 of the ugliest phones I could find over the past few years. The list is by no means definitive, and there may be some that you find uglier. These are the phones I've encountered over the years that made me wonder who thought that design would be a good idea. 12. Samsung Continuum The SamsungaContinuum is a perfect example of a smartphone manufacturer trying whatever it can to make a phone stand out. The gimmick of the Continuum is that it has a small secondary screen below the Android keys that can show notifications, the time, app icons or anything else. Except the phone only has one screen that's painted over near the bottom to create that separate display. The result is an ugly version of the original Galaxy S with a pointless second screen and buttons that look bizarrely pixelated. 11. HTC EVO 3D 4G Back when 3-D TVs were going to be the next big thing, a few phone companies released phones that would bring the feature to smaller screens. The result was phones with two cameras on the back, marring what would otherwise be a perfectly decent-looking device. The HTC EVO 3D 4G stands out in hindsight mainly because of HTC's design language at the time. Aside from the two rear-facing cameras the phone is a generic black slate, but the addition of the big circles around the capacitive buttons and the design of the HTC Sense software make the phone almost painful to look at. 10. LG Quantum The LG Quantum has the distinction of being the only Windows Phone on this list, which can either say a lot about the design of other Windows Phones or the relative lack of Windows Phones on the market. This phone is close to being just a plain slate, but has a few things that make it not so great. The landscape keyboard looks like something you'd find on a cheap Bluetooth keyboard case for the iPhone, which brings down the design of the whole phone. Then there's the button placement, which throws off the entire phone. 9. iPhone 3G/3GS When Apple introduced the iPhone 3G in 2008 there wasn't much to complain about -- it was an iPhone that supported 3G data and was faster. The features largely outweighed the design, but now it's hard to ignore how ugly the rounded phone is. The front of the phone is simple slate with a single button, like all iPhones, but the plastic back looks almost like a toy. The shiny silver plastic around the display only adds to the effect. Looking at the phone now as just another device, it's hard to say it looks good enough to be a premium device, a feat all other iPhones managed to achieve. 8. LG Optimus Vu The Optimus Vu should be an attractive phone. It's one of the first wave of phablets, designed to compete with the first models of the Samsung Galaxy Note, but LG decided to change the form factor a bit too much. What sets the LG Optimus Vu apart from other smartphones is its 4:3 display. The display makes the phone look far too wide and squat, despite the massive bezels above and below it. 7. T-Mobile Sidekick 4G The T-Mobile Sidekick 4G was the last attempt by the carrier to resurrect the popular feature phone brand for the smartphone era. While the OS of the phone was upgraded to Android, the design was stuck in the early aughts. To make matters worse, the skin put on top of Android was one of the ugliest designs ever shipped on a smartphone. Maybe it appealed to the millennials T-Mobile and Samsung were trying to go for, but that doesn't make it pleasing to look at. 6. Motorola Backflip I could have easily put any Motorola smartphone from around 2010 on this list. Everything from the Cliq to the Flipout and Spice had some ugly aspect to it. The Backflip stands out because it combined an ugly design with a head-scratching gimmick. When it's closed the Backflip looks like a standard Android phone until you turn it over and find the keyboard on the back. The backwards keyboard can serve as a stand for the phone, which can be a useful feature, but that doesn't make the back keyboard any less ugly. 5. HTC Status Also known as the HTC ChaCha or ChaChaCha, the HTC Status was one of the company's first attempts at making a Facebook phone. The phone combines HTC's design language at the time with all the excitement and beauty of a BlackBerry Curve, which is to say, not much. The Status is bent near the bottom, giving it the distinct HTC chin the company used on many of its early Android phones that, from the side, looks odd at best. For the most part, the front of the device is unassuming with an island-style keyboard that looks cheap and a too-busy UI on the screen. But then there's that Facebook button thatathrows everything off. 4. Sony Ericsson Xperia Play The Xperia Play was Sony Ericsson's first effort to bring PlayStation games to smartphone through Sony Mobile. To do this the company decided to add PlayStation controller buttons and D-pad below the display that only look good in press shots. The back of the phone is rounded and made of glossy plastic, and comes complete with shoulder buttons for the controller. The phone tried to combine Sony Ericsson's design with the design of a PSP Go, but ended up with a phone that's too bulky for its size and too crowded with buttons. 3. Microsoft Kin The Kin One (pictured above) and Kin Two were Microsoft's failed attempt at making phones specifically for teens. While there were numerous reasons the phones failed, the design certainly didn't help them too much. The palm-sized Kin One is especially bad, largely because the screen and the surrounding bezel are shorter than the bottom half of the phone. The result is a rounded square that sits imperfectly atop a gray rectangle. There's also the matter of the not-quite Windows Phone software and offset lettering on the keyboard (which also apply to the Kin Two), but those would be almost forgivable if the phone looked like it could close properly. 2.aBlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 a What's the best way to make a third- or fourth-place mobile OS more exciting? Hint: the answer isn't "let Porsche design a phone." The BlackBerry Porsche Design P'9981 is a special edition of the BlackBerry Q10 designed by the car company that makes an already unattractive design uglier. The phone is full of hard lines and angles that make it look much more square that other phones on the market, except for the slight curve at the bottom that doesn't fit with the rest of the phone. Then there are those keys with the angular cutouts that seem like they exist solely to draw attention away from the rest of the phone. 1. Nokia N-Gage The Nokia N-Gage is one of those devices that can be kind of hard to hate just because of how bad it was. The device was supposed to be both a cellphone and a portable game console (remember, this is before Apple announced the iPhone), taking design cues from both. What Nokia came up with looks like someone tried to shove a phone into a smaller version of the Sega Game Gear. What makes the N-Gage impossible to hate, though, is that anyone who actually bought it got to show off the phone/console whenever they made a call. The microphone and speaker of the N-Gage were put on top of the device, which introduced the world to Side Talking. If there's anything more gloriously awkward than holding a giant phablet to your face to make a call, it's holding what looks like an electronic taco to your face and trying to hold a conversation. Do you have any of these old phones or electronics and want to make some money from them? aClick here:aTrade-In Your Electronics and Get Paid By Amazon

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