A Polestar Cellphone now inexplicably exists

Polestar, the Volvo offshoot EV firm, has made a smartphone. It is known as, predictably, the Polestar Cellphone, and it is solely out there in China. There have been a whole lot of car-brand smartphones on the market (it is typically Lamborghini), however often, these are licensing offers that the automobile firm ignores. Polestar appears to be happy with this telephone, although, making it a bit extra concerned than the standard car-brand licensing deal. Simply have a look at the brand new navigation drawer on the polestar.cn website, which has 4 foremost objects: “Polestar 2”, “Polestar 3”, “Polestar 4” and now “Polestar Cellphone.”

Why would a distinct segment EV model make a telephone? Possibly all that work on the Android Automotive OS made Polestar’s engineers actually passionate about Android machine growth. The web site, via machine translation, guarantees the telephone was “collectively designed by the Polestar world design crew and the Xingji Meizu crew in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is embellished with Swedish gold particulars that symbolize excessive efficiency.” “Adorned” might be the easiest way you could possibly describe Polestar’s contributions to this telephone because it appears to be a lavatory normal Meizu 21 Professional with some Polestar branding. It does look stunning, with a no-nonsense minimal rectangular design and all-screen entrance, however the identical might be stated for the Meizu telephone that is based mostly on.

So, how precisely is the Polestar Cellphone associated to a Polestar automobile? Properly, each run Android and have all-electric energy programs. The telephone has a barely smaller battery than the EV, at solely 5,050 mAh (that is one thing like 18 Wh) in comparison with the 100 kWh battery of one thing like a Polestar 4. The automobile additionally has the telephone beat on-screen dimension, with the telephone packing a pocketable 120 Hz 6.79-inch, 3192×1368 OLED, and the Polestars all sporting large pill screens.

A spec comparability shouldn’t be a clear sweep for the vehicles, although. The unhappy factor concerning the state of the automobile infotainment market is that the pc on this ~$1,000 (7,388 yuan) telephone is dramatically sooner than what powers any of the infotainment programs in Polestar’s $50,000–$75,000 automobiles. The Polestar Cellphone ships with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. That is a flagship cell SoC from 2023 constructed on a 4 nm course of. All of the Polestar vehicles within the Google Play Developer console (which lists all Android units on the earth) are constructed round an Intel Atom A3960 SoC. That is a fully historic, bottom-of-the-barrel 14 nm x86 desktop CPU launched round 2016. This chip was dangerous eight years in the past when it got here out, but remains to be delivery right now. The vehicles all have 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and the Polestar 2 I checked out had 128GB of storage, all clear wins for the telephone spec sheet.

The Polestar Cellphone and Polestar Automotive (particularly, the Polestar 4) will speak to one another. Polestar guarantees that sometime the telephone will assist Android’s digital automobile key performance, however not at launch.  The Polestar Cellphone’s “Polestar UI” guarantees a “wealthy software icon design [that] is in line with the Polestar OS within the automobile.” One thing known as “Polestar Hyperlink” apparently enables you to see a number of pages of the telephone’s dwelling display on the massive automobile pill show, and it seems like perhaps apps will float between the 2 units? It is onerous to know too many particulars as a result of 1) there simply have not been that many particulars printed but, and a couple of) the main points that exist are all in Chinese language.

There’s a probability this telephone will likely be bought outdoors of China. Just like the vehicles, it’s on the Google Play Dev Console, and since there is no such thing as a Google Play in China, the telephone’s registration with Google suggests a plan for worldwide gross sales.

Itemizing picture by Polestar