phones

The Chilli fidget spinner phone K188

Andrew Moore-Crispin • December 13, 2017

Remember the trend for smaller and smaller phones back in the early aughts? Remember a couple of months ago when the fidget spinner was everywhere and everything?

This is the tiny fidget spinner phone and it’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of, assuming you dream of barebones phones mashed with fads that have already peaked.

We talked a little about the fidget spinner phone in our five weirdest phones that’ll work on Ting post. We mentioned that they weren’t really available in North America but that some were popping up on Ebay. We couldn’t resist. We bought one for about $30, including shipping, and we waited. And waited. And waited some more. On Tuesday of last week, our royal blue fidget spinner phone arrived.

The fidget spinner phone as fidget spinner

The Chilli K188 Spinner Phone is pretty well the size of your standard two ended fidget spinner. As fidget spinners go, it’s pretty well balanced. For people that consider this kind of thing, the K188 turned for over four minutes on a single spin (4:02).

What do you call the little axel piece you hold in thumb and forefinger when spinning a fidget spinner? Anyway, that piece, on the K188 it’s made of milled aluminum and the two pieces screw together, opening the possibility for customizing. We won’t talk too much more about the fidget spinner aspect of the fidget spinner phone because, well, how much can one really say on the subject before it becomes entirely esoteric.

The fidget spinner phone as phone

The 280 mAh battery isn’t exactly capacious but, given that it’s only responsible for running a basic feature phone with a postage stamp sized color screen (a 1-inch 128x96px affair), that’s not such a big deal. Beneath that tiny battery is a mini SIM card slot and another slot for a microSD card which I can’t imagine anyone ever using.

As super simple feature phones go, it’s fine. Maybe a handy backup phone for when you want to disconnect but not completely. As an attention-getter and conversation starter, it’s pretty effective. I guess the question in that case becomes how many times do you want to talk about your phone that is also a fidget spinner. I got pretty tired of talking about it somewhere around the sixth time I was asked.

The fact that you don’t have to use the Chilli fidget spinner phone as a phone with its own SIM card is a boon; in addition to being able to connect to a Bluetooth headset, the K188 can also act as a Bluetooth headset for your main smartphone, so you can have the best of both worlds.

People we called came through loud and clear and no one reported any issues with hearing us, unless we gave the fidget spinner phone a spin.

Perhaps the worst thing about the Chilli K188 fidget spinner phone / Bluetooth handset, is the fact that it plays a brief (and no doubt fully licensed) excerpt of Usher’s Yeah every time you start it up or shut it down.

That aside, the K188 is hands down the best fidget spinner cell phone we’ve ever tried. It is, of course, also the only one we’ve ever seen.