One word describes the NichePhone-S perfectly: basic. At a glance, the NichePhone-S looks like you pocketed your calculator by mistake on the way out of your house instead of your smartphone. The device, no bigger than a credit card, will fit snugly in the front pocket of your shirt. Heck, you could even slot this into your wallet if you wanted to.

At a glance, the device is two thirds physical number pad with a small 128x64 dot monochromatic LCD display tacked on top of it. Running on Android 4.2, the NichePhone-S is ultra-thin (6.5mm thick), ultra-light (38g) and powered by a miniscule 550mAh battery that is rechargeable wirelessly.

With its spartan specs, the NichePhone-S is pretty limited in what it can do. You do get Bluetooth and LTE support on top of the usual voice calls and SMSes. Oddly there is also a built-in music player/streamer and voice recorder. Unfortunately, there is no web browser, no play store or app store for you to install your Candy Crush or Tinder and yep, you guessed it, no Facebook or Instagram either.

With everybody racing for high-tech benchmarks, It is refreshing to know that there are companies out there that is willing to focus on basic devices. The NichePhone-S serves the need for Basic Communication in a very attractive and compact form factor. This phone is a sweet option for those looking for a basic secondary phone or data tether. You can get the NichePhone-S from Japan from November 10th onwards for the low price of RM400+