Meet Zanco tiny t1, the ‘world’s smallest phone’, even smaller than your credit card

Over the years, we have seen phone makers try out different shapes for the calling machines, ranging from flip-phones, phablets with screen sizes 6 inches and bigger, to 5.5-mm ultra slim phones. As modern smartphones are more or less settling in for the 5-6 inch edge-to-edge screen size, a UK company is running a Kickstarter campaign for what it claims to be the world's smallest mobile phone.

Called "Zanco Tiny t1", the phone has been developed by Clubit New Media, an 18-year-old company involved in retail and wholesale distribution of video games, collectibles, novelty gifts and gadgets.

Tiny t1 is smaller than a credit card and just bigger than a £2 coin. The company on its Kickstarter page says the phone could be used as a backup phone, and is "perfect for joggers, runners, walkers, cyclists and those who take part in extreme sports because it's so compact it can go in any-size pocket."

While Tiny t1 is a fully functional mobile phone, it's not a smartphone but a feature phone with a candy bar form factor. It operates on the dated 2G network and comes with a 200mAh battery that is said to deliver three days of standby and 180 minutes talk time.

Tiny t1 measures 46.7mm x 21mm x 12mm and weighs merely 13 grams. It has 0.49-inch OLED screen with 64 x 32 pixels resolution and comes with 32GB of built-in storage. Other key features of the phone include nano-SIM card slot, backlit T9 keypad, microUSB and Bluetooth. It supports up to 300 phonebook memory and 50 SMS messages.

That said, Tiny t1 is still a Kickstarter campaign, and will be only funded if it reaches its goal of $33,480 by January 19, 2018, which seems highly likely as the company has already hit $24,419. Customers who pledge about $40 (₹2,563 approximately) will get one unit of the phone by May 2018 "anywhere in the world".

While tiny t1 may be the world's smallest mobile phone and still a kickstarter project, you can grab a similar tiny functional phone in India as well. A Delhi-based e-commerce platform Yerha.com last month launched a Nanophone C, which was touted as the world's smallest GSM phone.

Priced at ₹2,999, the phone measures 94.4 x 35.85 x 7.6mm and weighs 30 grams and sports a feature phone-like design with a 1-inch TFT display of 128x96 pixels resolution. It runs on MediaTek MT6261D processor and has 32MB storage and supports additional storage up to 32GB via a microSD card. Nanophone C is powered by a 280 mAh Li-Polymer battery.