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The square-ish phone that I wanted to love
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The square-ish phone that I wanted to love
The charming Ikko MindOne Pro isn’t all it’s shaped up to be.
by Allison Johnson
Allison Johnson
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Follow See All by Allison Johnson
Jul 4, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC
A great concept that falls flat.
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The square-ish phone that I wanted to love
The charming Ikko MindOne Pro isn’t all it’s shaped up to be.
by Allison Johnson
Allison Johnson
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Follow See All by Allison Johnson
Jul 4, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC
Allison Johnson
Allison Johnson
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Follow See All by Allison Johnson
is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
The Ikko MindOne Pro is delightfully small.
I keep calling it a square phone, which isn’t quite right; the screen is square, but the phone itself is slightly rectangular. The camera flips up so you can use it for selfies — you can even open it partway to use as a stand or a kind of PopSocket. There’s a Clicks-style keyboard accessory that also adds a magnetic ring and a headphone jack. I tried so hard to like it, but this phone is a miss no matter how you look at it.
I used it like a normal phone. I downloaded a minimalist launcher and tried using it as kind of a dumb phone. I put the keyboard case on. I took the keyboard case off. Nothing feels quite right.
Hip to be square.
I first met the MindOne Pro at CES back in January. It’s made by Ikko, a company based in Shenzhen that has mainly produced earbuds and audio accessories until now. The MindOne Pro is the company’s take on a small smartphone, or an AI gadget, or… both I guess. It ships globally and is priced at $499, though it’s currently marked down to $429 on the company’s website.
As charming as the hardware is, I noticed some yellow flags right off the bat when it got significantly warm as I was setting it up. Initial setup is always a lot for a phone’s processor to chew through, but the MindOne got noticeably hotter on that first day out of the box than most phones I use.
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