Paid homage to the classic toy, the Barbie Phone is truly a play on the world of Barbie, its pink aesthetic, rhinestone accessories laid on top of its delightful Barbie-centric interface. The phone takes a full plunge into its theme, from the unboxing experience to its pink charger and its cheer up “Hi Barbie!” greeting. Much like Barbie’s famously impractical proportions, the phone is too big to carry, and too small to use in the real world.
The Barbie Phone is built on HMD’s feature phone platform which has KaiOS, a basic device aimed at calls, texts and minimal web browsing. The intention is to feed a taste for old school simplicity with digital detoxing, delivering to users ‘Barbie Tips’ which include dedicated tech free zones and considering how much smartphone use is paired with face to face interactions. This sounds like a good idea, until you realize that this is a terrible execution. Texting using T9 predictive text is as clumsy as ever; even entering complex passwords seems so outdated. Syncing calendars is a must have but rarely works, appointments regularly change date without warning. The web browser barely begins to load basic sites and the FM radio app ignores wired earbuds.
It also has practical concerns related to the phone’s design. Mirrored front — a gimmick for self framing in its earliest incarnation, it soon becomes a smudge covered distraction. It’s worse than that, forcing us to look in the mirror whenever we check notifications, an inherently less than flattering experience especially when groggy. While it’s so adorable, the Barbie Phone is better served as a collectible device. It’s fun to unbox and even more fun to show off; a nostalgic nod back to simpler times. It has, however, good and bad simultaneously: good in that it is useful, bad in that its annoyances really outweigh its utility for daily use. Barbie’s world is a dream and Barbie Phone shows the discrepancy between pixels and pixels. It’s a cute novelty, destined to spend more time in a drawer than it ever will in your hand, much the same as the dolls it’s pays tribute to.
