Wave Signal Compact Phone

Details

For people who want a phone they can work with one hand: 146 x 70 x 8.2 mm, 168 g, and a 6.1 inch AMOLED. It runs LifeOS Mobile, so the battery lasts a day because nothing is running behind your back. The cheat specific to a compact phone is the compact tax. A small model is usually last year's processor in a new shell, with a 60 Hz panel, a shorter update window and a slower charger, priced as though none of that had happened, on the reasoning that anyone who wants a small phone has nowhere else to go. The general cheats sit on top of it. The update window, which decides how long the phone is safe to bank on, is the single most important number on a phone and almost nobody prints it. The charger is left out of the box and sold back to you. The charging wattage on the box is a peak held for the first few minutes. And an IP rating is either quoted with no standard behind it or left off entirely and replaced with the words splash resistant. This phone gets the same processor, the same 120 Hz panel generation, the same charger and the same seven year security window as the larger Signal. The only smaller things are the screen and the battery.

• Five years of LifeOS Mobile version upgrades and seven years of security patches, to July 2033. Monthly for the first five years, quarterly after that. Both numbers, because a version upgrade and a security patch are not the same promise
• 33 W USB-C Power Delivery charger and cable in the box, not sold separately, and a standard PD adapter rather than a proprietary brick
• 33 W is the peak, held for about the first ten minutes. Averaged across a full charge it is about 16 W at the wall, because the last twenty percent is deliberately slow to protect the cell. 0 to 50 percent in 27 minutes, 0 to 100 in 72 minutes
• 4,300 mAh at 3.87 V nominal, which is 16.6 Wh. Both figures, because mAh alone is not a capacity
• 7 hours 5 minutes of screen-on time measured at 200 nits and 120 Hz on Wi-Fi, mixed browsing, video and camera. Not a looped video test
• IP67 to IS/IEC 60529, tested on new units: dust-tight, and thirty minutes at one metre in fresh water. It is not a rating for hot water, salt water or pressure, seals age, and liquid damage is not covered by the warranty
• Panel brightness printed three ways rather than only the largest: 580 nits full-screen white at manual maximum, 890 nits full-screen in the sunlight mode for up to five minutes, 1,300 nits on an HDR highlight covering under three percent of the screen
• The memory and storage are soldered. At this size that is not avoidable, so instead there is a microSD slot to 1 TB and a 3.5 mm jack, and the update window is published so the phone does not become unsafe before it becomes full
• Every unit is new. No returned display, battery or mainboard is fitted into a new phone, and the cell's manufacturing week is printed on the pack
• There is no Shuunnya service-centre network. A warranty claim means sending the phone to us, and no turnaround time is promised because none can honestly be promised yet