{"id":659064,"date":"2026-08-27T10:35:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659064\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T10:35:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T10:35:12","slug":"minimal-phone-2-with-physical-qwerty-keyboard-5g-and-imessage-support-gets-12-gb-ram-upgrade-as-kickstarter-soars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659064\/","title":{"rendered":"Minimal Phone 2 with physical QWERTY keyboard, 5G, and iMessage support gets 12 GB RAM upgrade as Kickstarter soars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/fileadmin\/Notebooks\/News\/_nc5\/Minimal-Phone-2-260.jpg\" title=\"The Minimal Phone 2. \" data-caption=\"The Minimal Phone 2. \" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/fileadmin\/_processed_\/d\/b\/csm_Minimal-Phone-2-260_54eef24b6e.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"240\" height=\"205\" alt=\"The Minimal Phone 2. \"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u24d8 Andre Youkhna.<\/p>\n<p><\/a>The Minimal Phone 2. <\/p>\n<p>The Minimal Company is set to start shipping its second-gen device, the Minimal Phone 2, at the end of the year. The Minimal Phone 2 is a callback to popular BlackBerry phones of the past, and features a MediaTek Dimensity 8300, 5G, and a touch-capacitive physical QWERTY keyboard. <\/p>\n<p class=\"bodytext\">The first-gen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/Minimal-Phone-Low-priced-smartphone-with-E-Ink-display-and-complete-keyboard.809636.0.html\" target=\"_self\" class=\"internal-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Minimal Phone<\/a> debuted over a year ago to a mostly positive reception. The Minimal Company is set to bring a direct successor to the market soon and\u2014judging by its Kickstarter progress\u2014appears to have garnered a fair bit of interest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"bodytext\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/Minimal-Phone-2-spec-sheet-reveals-a-MediaTek-processor-90Hz-display-and-faster-wired-charging.1364525.0.html\" target=\"_self\" class=\"internal-link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Minimal Phone 2<\/a> went live on Kickstarter earlier this month, and exceeded its $100,000 goal within minutes. Since then, the project has received more and more backing, with over $1.6M currently pledged. That should please potential buyers, with The Minimal Company previously promising to upgrade every Minimal Phone 2 to a minimum of 12 GB of RAM if the Kickstarter hit the $1.5M mark.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"bodytext\">While the Minimal Phone featured an e-ink screen, the Minimal Phone 2 opts for an OLED, which should improve the overall user experience. The minimalist phone also sports a physical QWERTY keyboard akin to older Blackberry phones, with said keyboard <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Youkhna\/status\/2090138903898636355\" class=\"external-link-new-window\" data-htmlarea-external=\"1\" rtekeep=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow\">being touch-capacitive<\/a>. 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, a physical SIM slot and E-sim, Bluetooth 5.4, and GPS are all present as well, and the phone will run on the Android-based Minimal OS.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"bodytext\">Company co-founder Andre Youkhna has teased iMessage support on the Minimal Phone 2, but it&#8217;s important to note that it&#8217;s a feature only possible thanks to OpenBubbles, which <a href=\"https:\/\/openbubbles.app\/docs\/faq.html\" class=\"external-link-new-window\" data-htmlarea-external=\"1\" rtekeep=\"1\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">typically requires a Mac for activation<\/a>\u00a0or a $16.99 monthly fee otherwise. The Minimal Phone 2 is expected to begin shipping in December or early 2027, and we&#8217;ll keep you updated on further developments. For more information, head to the Kickstarter page in the &#8220;Sources&#8221; section below.<\/p>\n<p>\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/Notebookcheck-Team.212978.0.html?&amp;tx_nbc2journalist_pi1%5Bmode%5D=show&amp;tx_nbc2journalist_pi1%5Buid%5D=218\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/fileadmin\/_processed_\/5\/1\/csm_Ricci_Rox_70dfcfbb4c.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" alt=\"Ricci Rox\"\/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.notebookcheck.net\/Notebookcheck-Team.212978.0.html?&amp;tx_nbc2journalist_pi1%5Bmode%5D=show&amp;tx_nbc2journalist_pi1%5Buid%5D=218\" class=\"j_name\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ricci Rox<\/a> &#8211; Senior Tech Writer  &#8211; 3187 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2017<\/p>\n<p>I like tech, simple as. Half the time, you can catch me writing snarky sales copy. The rest of the time, I&#8217;m either keeping readers abreast with the latest happenings in the mobile tech world or watching football. I worked as both a journo and freelance content writer for a couple of years before joining the Notebookcheck team in 2017. Feel free to shoot me some questions on Twitter or Reddit if it so tickles thine fancy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u24d8 Andre Youkhna. The Minimal Phone 2. The Minimal Company is set to start shipping its second-gen device,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[257],"tags":[1820,18,1821,19,17,1815,266664,265865,279,1819,1814,1822,100446,1818,1142,1143,82,1817,1816],"class_list":["post-659064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-benchmarks","tag-eire","tag-graphics-card","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-laptop","tag-minimal-phone","tag-minimal-phone-2","tag-mobile","tag-netbook","tag-notebook","tag-processor","tag-qwerty","tag-reports","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-technology","tag-test","tag-tests"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117167032052115818","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}