Concept & rare

A holeless phone concept that solves no real problem and never hit its crowdfunding goal.

A rebadged Samsung phone with a sticker on it, sent only to reviewers while customer orders never arrived, so he says steer clear.

A one-off prototype showing the phone's real working components, with Mi 10 Pro-like specs, not for sale.

An earlier transparent edition he thought was epic, though the visible parts were not real components.

The rollable concept made Arun's confidence in foldables wobble because the form factor finally made sense to him.

A 50-day battery phone so thick it was impractical, and it sold almost nothing.

A strange new kind of phone that looked fascinating but never launched before Essential shut down.

Escobar's first phone, a rebadged Royole FlexPai sold at $349.

A wacky $250 crypto phone with modest specs, notable for being the first with full Bitcoin node support.

A gaudy Gundam-themed limited edition that looks better in person, with a nice bundled case and a 65W charger.

A CES hidden gem with localised haptics that lets you feel textures and virtual buttons, saving battery too.

Pressure-sensing concept phone that he thinks will be pivotal as screens wrap around devices and buttons disappear.

Fun, striking limited-edition phone with excellent low-light video, but software is much the same as the far cheaper Mate 30 Pro, so it is…

A fascinating piece of history with a surprisingly good keyboard and strong software foundations, but the trackball, screen and camera show…

A completely new Samsung-built phone that fixed the Nexus One's mistake by being sold in stores.

Price-constrained with a 1080p LCD, but a good chip and clean software at $379 made people happy.

Best of Samsung and Google, well rounded apart from a mediocre camera, and cheaper than its predecessor.

A nice iterative upgrade with a god-tier chip at an affordable price, held back by its camera.

Polarising Futurama-like design, but a better signal, Google's best camera yet and more manageable than the Nexus 6.

A big step forward from the G1, with a slimmer body and no physical keyboard.

Aggressive design, top-tier specs for its time and a plain Google software experience.

A beastly phone and a flying start for Nexus, held back only by poor sales from the sell-direct model.

Liked the redesigned hinge but skipped it as it wasn't a Google launch device.

Great software, but too big, bulky and expensive after a huge price jump.