Ikko MindOne – Ikko’s MindOne Pro is a delightful little phone on the outside—square screen, flip-up camera, and a quirky keyboard accessory. But in day-to-day use, the battery drains fast, the camera struggles indoors, and the square display makes web and video awkward. Eve
Ikko’s MindOne Pro looks like the kind of phone you’d want to carry—small. almost cute. and unmistakably odd in all the right ways. The camera flips up for selfies, and the whole device feels like it’s designed to invite play. Then you set it up. The glow fades quickly. The warm-up is too fast. The battery drops too hard. And the “square phone” idea turns out to be a harder fight than it first appears.
I first met the MindOne Pro in January at CES. It’s made by Ikko, a Shenzhen-based company known mainly for earbuds and audio accessories until now. The MindOne Pro is positioned as a small smartphone—and potentially an AI gadget. depending on how you squint at the spec sheet—and it ships globally. Pricing starts at $499, though it was marked down to $429 on the company’s website at the time described.
The hardware’s charm is real. The screen is square, even if the phone itself is slightly rectangular. The flip-up main camera does double duty for selfies. and it can open partway so it also works like a stand—something like a PopSocket style setup. There’s even a Clicks-style keyboard accessory, and it adds a magnetic ring and a headphone jack.
But once the phone is in your hand, the problems start stacking.
Setup should be taxing, but the MindOne Pro got significantly warm during initial setup—hot enough to be a yellow flag right away. A week later, it had settled down somewhat, though it still warmed up noticeably when used.
Battery life is where the disappointment turns practical. In one hour and a half, the phone dropped from the mid 90 percents to the 60s. The testing described wasn’t punishing—reels scrolling, surfing around on Google Maps, and streaming music over Wi‑Fi. Even that was enough to eat through roughly a third of the battery in less than two hours.
Then there’s the camera.
The novel flip-up design is a good idea. The results, though, “stink.” Color processing is inconsistent. Daylight photos are usually okay, but images taken under dim indoor lighting look too green.
Even the square screen, which sounds like it could be stylish, becomes a daily usability problem. The web is built for vertical rectangles. and the phone’s default behavior is to fill the entire screen area—cropping into the middle of vertical videos and websites. On top of that, the on-screen keyboard takes up more than half the display area.
Ikko does include some quick settings to help with the worst parts. There’s a toggle for resolution, which fits more content onto the screen. There’s also a toggle to switch the display to a vertical aspect ratio with black bars on the sides. That helps for the moments when text boxes and date pickers just don’t work with a square screen. even if it means shrinking the usable area inside an already small display.
The MindOne Pro also lands in a strange place for anyone trying to use it as a lifestyle device.
The review frames it as something that might work best as a minimalist phone—or a weekend alternative. The author brings up the appeal of something like a Light phone that avoids endless apps like Instagram. But the reality here is messier. You can open the Instagram app. and the experience is so bad that you might do it less—but the author still found themselves scrolling Instagram just as often. only with a worse time.
The keyboard case is another “sounds great” accessory that doesn’t quite click.
It includes a little battery inside, and there’s a switch to charge the phone while you use it. The headphone jack is described as a thoughtful touch. Still, the keys felt more fiddly than typing on the screen. Even with prior experience on a Blackberry Curve, the author found the keyboard case slower and fussier than virtual keys.
On the software side, there’s a separate launcher dedicated to AI apps. It offers a chatbot that lets you switch between LLMs, along with a notes app. The device also includes a global eSIM that you can toggle on. It’s free to use with the AI launcher. but you need to pay to use it for messaging and the like. The connection was described as slow in the author’s area in Seattle.
There was also a moment of friction with the AI assistant’s handling of a sensitive question. The author asked whether Hong Kong is part of China. The phone responded in Spanish and said it couldn’t help with the question.
In the end, the review argues that the phone’s shape may have always been too difficult to get right. Fighting to render webpages and apps built for rectangles through a square-shaped window is framed as a losing battle. The author suggests that what the world may need is a small. rectangular phone with modern bells and whistles—then makes a direct plea to phone makers to bring back an iPhone Mini with USB‑C charging and a battery that doesn’t die halfway through the day.
For this reviewer, the MindOne Pro isn’t that phone. It might be the right fit for someone who’s easy on battery life and isn’t picky about camera quality. For everyone else, the conclusion is simple: keep looking.
Ikko MindOne Pro square phone flip-up camera keyboard case eSIM AI launcher LLM chatbot smartphone review battery life camera quality mobile web usability