Here at Android Authority, we love Android phones (surprise). But even we have to admit there have been some truly terrible Android phone names.
Read also: The best Android phones of 2019
Rather than letting these companies off the hook, we decided to round up all the offenders and rank them from worse to worst. Without further ado, here are the worst Android phone names, ranked.
15. HTC First
The first item on our list of the worst phone names is the HTC First, which was roughly the company’s fifty-first Android device released to the market. It was, however, the first phone to be pre-loaded with Facebook’s interface, Facebook Home. This new interface gave Facebook even more access to your data in exchange for… a mediocre new launcher?
The HTC First was also the only device to come ever pre-loaded with Facebook Home, effectively making it the HTC Last.
14. Kodak Ektra
Kodak, which dropped out of the digital camera business in 2012, decided it was a good idea to shift focus and release a camera-focused smartphone back in 2016. Pulling the name from a circa-1940s 35mm camera, the Kodak Ektra really looked the part. It even had some really cool accessories that made it look like a classic camera.
Read also: Best Android camera phones of 2019
Unfortunately, the photos it took were pretty dire. With a high price tag, mediocre specs, and a name that was begging to be auto-corrected, the Kodak Ektra needed a few more years in the dark room.
13. Motorola Flipout
Don’t have a cow, man. The Motorola Flipout was named after the flip out QWERTY keyboard hidden beneath its 2.8-inch square display. This meant that the keyboard was also 2.8-inches, which is truly the ideal keyboard size (for infants).
To be fair, the Motorola Flipout didn’t have a lot of options for names. The other option, the Motorola Twist, would have given away the fact that the entire design was ripped from the Nokia 7705 Twist.
12. Lenovo Phab 2 Pro
The Lenovo Phab 2 Pro continued the line of phabulous large screen devices from Lenovo, coming in at 6.4-inches. It was notable as the first device to integrate Google’s Tango AR system (seriously missed opportunity, HTC Salsa/ChaCha), which is the predecessor of today’s ARCore technology.
To give credit where credit’s due, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro was also an early adopter of the now-ubiquitous “Pro” monicker, despite the fact that it was decidedly mid-range. Groovy, man.
11. LG V30S ThinQ
The LG V30S ThinQ (pronounced “Thin-kyoo”, as in Thin-kyoo could’ve come up with a better name?) was the first smartphone to bear LG’s unbearable ThinQ branding.
LG has kept the controversial ThinQ branding on subsequent phones, but maybe someday the company will do the un-ThinQ-able and change it to something better.
10. Royole FlexPai
As the world’s first foldable phone, Royole could have named its device whatever it wanted. Perplexingly, it went with FlexPai, because the display is flexible, I guess. When Samsung announced its folding phone a few months later, it was called the — wait for it — Fold.
Read also: Foldable phones with flexible displays: Every device announced so far
Royole absolutely deserves credit for being first, but the FlexPai stands out as being the least compelling folding device with the worst name by far. Here’s a quick take from resident pun-in-chief Hadlee Simons:
Weird Flexpai but okay
— Hadlee Simons (@HadleeSimons) October 18, 2019
9. Palm Palm
The Palm Palm, apparently inspired by one-half of a cheerleader’s kit, was the newly resurrected Palm brand’s first attempt at a minimalist phone that only worked by connecting to your real (Verizon) phone. The 3.3-inch phone-away-from-phone succeeded at being less than a smartphone, at roughly the same price.
The upside is that with two smartphones you can hold one in each hand and wave them around like real pom poms, drawing attention to your poor purchasing decisions.
8. ZTE Iconic Phablet
ZTE, which was getting banned from the US Market way before Huawei made it cool, was clearly full of optimism when it released the Iconic Phablet in 2014. Nowadays pretty much all phones are phablets, but at the time the 5.7-inch screen was one of the largest available.
Ultimately, the Iconic Phablet failed at displacing the actual iconic phablet, the Samsung Galaxy Note. You can’t blame ZTE for trying, though.
7. Motorola Quench
Thirsty? The Motorola Quench (technically it’s QUENCH, but that’s not going to happen) manages to sound both aggressive and disgusting, which is exactly what you want from a smartphone.
The Motorola Quench was actually the keyboard-less version of another device, the Motorola CLIQ XT, or Motorola Dext outside the US. That’s three for three on awful phone names, for those keeping score.
6. HTC ChaCha/Salsa
The HTC ChaCha (known as the even more egregious HTC ChaChaCha in some parts of the world) and its full-screened cousin, the HTC Salsa, were launched way back in 2011 with Android Gingerbread. I wouldn’t recommend combining gingerbread with latin dancing, but apparently someone at HTC signed off on the idea.
The main draw of the ChaCha and Salsa was their integration with Facebook, with a dedicated button that opened the social media giant. The convenience was almost worth the “Posted from my HTC ChaCha” message at the end of every status update.
5. Wickedleak Wammy Passion X
Wickedleak, not to be confused with Julian Assange’s top-secret document dumping organization, is a relatively small OEM in India. Its 2014 followup to the Wammy Passion Z and Z Plus phones was the Wickedleak Wammy Passion X, despite the fact that X comes before Z in the alphabet.
The Wickedleak Wammy Passion X’s keystone feature is “super-hydrophobic” coating, which should help protect the phone from any wicked leaks in daily use.
4. Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch
2011’s Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch was one of the most impressive phones of its time. It offered a monstrous 4.5-inch Super AMOLED display and a blazing fast 1.2Gz dual-core processor. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much money left in the budget for naming, so the task was crowdsourced to a boisterous group of pre-teens found on Xbox Live.
As the name (maybe?) implies, the Epic 4G Touch still used Samsung’s clunky TouchWiz interface, which even in 2011 was anything but epic.
3. Verykool Apollo Quattro
Someone was sipping the Verykool-aid when they named this Android phone. Despite coming out in 2018, it packs a very un-kool 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal storage. And no, there wasn’t a Verykool Apollo Tre, Due, or Uno.
But hey, it does have a fingerprint sensor, which is more than can be said about the Pixel 4.
2. Acer Liquid Zest Plus
The Acer Liquid Zest Plus is just what you need to get those stubborn hard water stains out of your bathtub or sink. Packed with a soft, absorbent Marshmallow and 5,000mAh of juice, there’s enough here to scrub down the whole house!
In all seriousness, nothing about this phone stands out in any way, except for the name. And not in a good way.
1. Casio G’zOne Commando
We’ve finally arrived at the absolute worst Android phone name of all time. The Casio G’zOne Commando (pronounced “jeez one”, you perverts) was one of a few smartphones released by Japanese NEC Mobile Communications. Despite the god-awful name, it was one of the most rugged phones available in 2011.
It was also one of the ugliest and buggiest phones released that year, but at least you could take out your frustration by throwing it against a wall.
Honorable mentions
Poor judgment in naming isn’t limited to just Android phones, so here are a few more terrible phone names from the non-Android space.
iPhone XS: Apple broke with its long standing tradition of easy-to-remember phone names with the iPhone XS (“10 ess”) and XR (“10 arr”). The attempt to get consumers to “think different” about the use of Roman numerals was nixed with the iPhone 11, but the company is still treading in dangerous waters with the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Yezz Billy 4.7: Aw, yezz. The Yezz Billy 4.7 was a Windows phone that was actually named after the founder of Microsoft, Bill “Yezzy” Gates. The screen is unsurprisingly 4.7-inches, and the rest of this entry-level device is completely ordinary.
Poop Phone: This fecal phenom was a feature phone knock-off of the Chinese brand Oppo. Understandably, the device was flushed before it ever made it to Western shores.
That’s it for our list of the worst Android phone names! Did we miss any stinkers? Let us know in the comments below!
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