13 PAINFUL Smartphone Fails we’ll never forget.

Great idea and beautiful when opened, but the execution is compromised, so it ranks as a mild fail.

A rushed, bulky and buggy first foldable that gave the whole category a bad start.

Apple's cancelled multi-device wireless charging mat, a fail due to heat and interference problems.

A weak follow-up to the HTC One that helped seal HTC's decline.

The modular ecosystem was doomed because too few people bought the phone to attract accessory makers.

Not BlackBerry's worst phone, but it embodied their failure to grasp the importance of apps.

A forced, slow assistant that has improved since launch but is still seen as a meme.

A comically bad, overpriced phone that was just a portal to Amazon and cost the company $170 million.

Futuristic-looking phone, but the company's claims far outstripped what it delivered.

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

Believes Apple's reasoning was genuine, but secrecy made it look malicious.

Hyped as a cinema-camera phone, but the cameras were worse than flagships and the promised modules never arrived.

Three fails in one: premature leaks, underwhelming Soli radar and compromised hardware.

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