China maker launches hexagonal phones 'for women'

Do women need phones with their own unique design? Every once in a while, someone comes up with a gender-centric device that seeks to meet a niche that has not already been addressed. China-based Keecoo Mobile wants to support the fact that women have smaller hands than men and therefore find smaller devices easier to use. The company says explicitly that it makes "smartphones for women." That is why the Keecoo K1 is in the shape of a hexagon, according to the group. The V shape on the top and bottom of the phone is supposed to make it easier for people with small hands to use, but the device still has a 5in screen.

The concept of smaller phones for smaller hands is not crazy. While larger phones boosted initially the iPhone’s sales for Apple, a small number of consumers were not happy with the huge form factor and got to pick up a newer 4in model when the iPhone SE was released this year. Ultimately, it was not smaller hands reaching for the device that made the iPhone SE successful but developing markets where the affordable price tag was more appealing.

While the iPhone SE uses many of the same components in the iPhone 6s, the K1 is not so high-end. The phone employs a 13MP Sony sensor on the back of the camera that can record in 1080 pixels at 30fps. Other specifications are less impressive. The handset runs on 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. The chip is an older MediaTek MT6735P, which is a 1.3GHz quadcore processor. The screen is also just 720 pixels while the battery is 2,300mAh.

On paper, Keecoo's K1 is not a bad phone, but it remains to be seen whether the advantages for smaller hands are real enough to warrant the advertising angle. After all, other models and brands use this V shape. Meitu adopts it in the V4 mobile handset, while a number of other China smartphone makers have used similar designs. However, the rectangular shape of iPhones and Galaxy handsets is still the dominant form factor. Maybe that is just because no one thought to market hexagonal phones directly to women.