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Smartphones have been around long enough that, to the casual observer, their designs seem to have hit a plateau. And on a functional level, thats more or less truewere all essentially holding the same six-inch-ish rectangle, aside from the occasional foldable exception. But the maturity and ubiquity of smartphones have sparked a new phenomenon: the return of trends in cycles, much like fashion. For example, most phones released in the past few years have flat sides, like the iPhone 4 from 2010. Five years ago, almost all those sides would have been curved. Flat edges arent a new inventiontheyre just whats trending again. But this year brings a surprising twist, something many thought unlikely to return: For the first time in a while, major phone makers are prioritizing thinness. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/multicore_logo.jpg","headline":"Multicore","description":"Multicore is about technology hardware and design. It's written from Tokyo by Sam Byford. To learn more visit multicore.blog","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.multicore.blog","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}} Samsung kicked off the year by announcing its Galaxy S25 lineup, which includes a slimline model, the Galaxy S25 Edge. Bloombergs Mark Gurman has reported that Apple is planning a thinner 2025 iPhone said to feature a single camera. And smaller brands like Tecno showed off unusually thin phones at last months Mobile World Congress. So, why now? Around a decade ago, it was common for companies to boast about how thin their phones were. Heres the real magic, said Apples Phil Schiller when introducing the larger screens in 2014s 6.9mm-thick iPhone 6. Thinner than any phones weve ever madethat took an incredible amount of engineering. A few months later, Oppo announced its R5 phone, which came in at a record-breaking 4.85mm. A Samsung Galaxy Edge smartphone next to the Samsung Galaxy 23 and Samsung Galaxy 24 smartphones at the Galaxy Unpacked event in San Jose, on Wednesday, January 22, 2025. [Photo: Michaela Vatcheva/Bloomberg via Getty Images] Back then, it seemed inevitable that phones would just keep getting thinner. But then something curious happened: The iPhone 6S got thicker, bumping up to 7.1mm and switching to a stronger aluminum alloy. It was an unofficial but obvious response to the iPhone 6s tendency to bend. (It happened to me.) No one complained much about the iPhone 6S’s structural integrity, but iPhones kept getting thicker, topping out at the 8.3mm we see with the current iPhone 16 Pro. By and large, people havent seemed to mind. Battery life is much less of a concern than it used to be, and todays increasingly large camera hardware simply wouldnt fit in thinner devices. The 2025 flurry of deliberately thin phones, then, is a clear break from recent trends. So why are manufacturers converging on the same idea? The primary answer may be technical. While we dont yet know what Samsung or Apple are using in their upcoming devices, silicon-carbon batteries have become increasingly common in Chinese Android phones over the past year. Infusing silicon into the battery chemistry can provide a meaningful increase in capacity within the same volume. Oppos latest Find N5 folding phone, for example, is just 4.2mm thick when unfoldedbarely thick enough to accommodate a USB-C port. But its 5,600mAh silicon-carbide battery represents a 17% increase in capacity over its predecessor, the Find N3, even though that phone was 38% thicker. Other companies like Xiaomi and Vivo have used the tech to similar ends. The other reason thinner phones might take off is more subjective. When was the last time a new phone truly wowed you? There will clearly be trade-offs in battery life and performance with a significantly thinner device. But if you finish each day with more than half a charge, or if you rarely use your telephoto lens, its plausible you might prefer a slimmer, more attractive handset. Combine better battery technology with the fact that most people dont need flagship-level performance, and suddenly a slim phone with few compromises seems pretty reasonable. It makes sense for companies to carve out space for design-forward devices in their lineups. Samsung has always been willing to experiment; and while Apple tends to be more conservative, its reportedly unimpressed with sales of its mid-tier Plus-not-Pro iPhones. Why not try something more distinctive between the entry level and the high end? If anything, the question is whether these designs will go far enough. Samsung has yet to announce the Galaxy S25 Edges specs or let anyone in the media handle it, but I saw it suspended in the air at Mobile World Congress and wasnt particularly blown away by its dimensions. Bloombergs Gurman has suggested the upcoming slim iPhone will be about 2mm thinner than an iPhone 16 Pro, putting it around 6.3mmmore in line with the iPhone 6 than todays thicker models. Maybe thats the right tradeoff. The goal here should be to create something like the MacBook Air of phones: impressive design with unspectacular specs that are good enough for most use cases. The Pro models can continue to be for people who really need them. Plenty of people will always want the most performant phone with the biggest battery and best cameras, of course. But when a phones selling point is its physical form, it cant really be judged until you pick it up for yourselfand then find out how long its battery lasts. {"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/03\/multicore_logo.jpg","headline":"Multicore","description":"Multicore is about technology hardware and design. It's written from Tokyo by Sam Byford. To learn more visit multicore.blog","substackDomain":"https:\/\/www.multicore.blog","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Category:
E-Commerce
Beverly Hills hottest club is California Pizza Kitchen. At least, thats what someone unfamiliar with the brand might have taken away from its new rebrand, which debuted on Monday. On its website, California Pizza Kitchen replaced its friendly yellow logo and wordmark with a silver chrome logo and the shortened name CPK. [Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen] Meanwhile, on socials, the brand posted several videos of its new identity that looked more fit for promoting a rave than a family friendly pizza restaurant. Shots of flashing lights, serious models, and slogans like DEVOUR THE DOUBTERS and Fresh. To. Death were cut with clips of harshly-lit pizzas and interspersed with the brands new all-caps wordmark. At first glance, one might have assumed these were assets for a new Liquid Death campaign or MSCHF launch. Many commenters on CPKs socials were quick to question what was going on with the brand, including the official Little Caesers account, which commented, Bestie whats happening on a particularly odd video. But, as it turns out, the whole edgelord rebrand was just a temporary marketing play to promote California Pizza Kitchens 40th anniversary. The restaurant just revealed the hoax through a partnership with actress Busy Phillips and restored its platforms to its original branding. The campaign shows that, amidst an influx of purposefully shocking brand moves like Jaguars totally unrecognizable rebrand or Duolingos decision to briefly kill off its mascot, weve reached a new stage of the trend cycle: full brand-on-brand parody. CPK’s midlife crisis Dawn Keller joined California Pizza Kitchens as its CMO about a year ago. Since then, she says, shes learned that sentiment around the brand is overwhelmingly positive, given that many customers associate it with years of childhood dinners. The issue, though, is that many fans just dont think about CPK that often, Keller says. Part of the problem is that the restaurant hasnt made much of an investment in its marketing efforts to keep CPK top of mind. On socials, it has a staid strategy of essentially reposting traditional ad materialsan approach thats less than ideal in a social media landscape that rewards brands who embrace big personalities and brain rot content. So, CPK decided to use the four decade milestone as an opportunity to shake things up by staging a midlife crisis. [Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen] Leading up to the campaign, CPK conducted extensive brand research with its creative agency, Iris Worldwide, to decide how the company might grab consumers attention. That work led them to the conclusion that their existing brand positioning and visual identity was strong enough to exclude the possibility of an actual rebrand. Instead, Keller says, the 40-year anniversary campaign riffs on the tendency of other mature brands to go into panic mode and debut a rebrand that loses touch with their original purpose. We were never of the opinion that we had to upend the apple cart and totally rebrand, Keller says. It was really more about, How do we rejuvenate this brand, amplify it, but do it in a fresher way than we’ve done? [. . .] There was a bit of parody that we were doing, knowing that some brands evolve, and it’s great, but some, you feel like they jump the shark. [Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen] While CPKs hypebeast look only lasted for a week, Keller says the intention of the move was to usher the brand into a more adventurous, culturally relevant marketing era on social media. For CPK, the marketing stunt surfaces an interesting tension between embracing a decades-old existing brand identity and parodying shock-value rebrands, while, at the same time, essentially benefitting from the shock-value strategy itself. Today, even brands who don’t actively embody what Fast Company has termed “DGAF branding” might still have to play into it to succeed online. Thus far, the fake rebrand has resulted in 21 million social impressions for CPK. [Photo: courtesy California Pizza Kitchen] It’s also yielded a mixed bag of responses. Keller says her team was expecting some confusion and backlash, both of which have been proven out. Whats surprised them, though, is that many fans actually liked the new look. You’ve got literally people who were giving it a thumbs up and supported it, Keller says. Maybe that’s the minority, but even to see people with positive reactions to the fake brand really made us laugh. I think it goes back to that brand equity that CPK has, which is, people want CPK to win. They really do. They love it. A lot of people grew up with it. Even when we do something that iscome onobjectively preposterous, they’re still celebrating it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Since President Trumps return to office in January, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has dropped several enforcement actions against companies filed under the agencys previous director, Rohit Chopra. Now the bureau is seeking to give back a $105,000 penalty that Chicago-based lender Townstone Financial paid to settle alleged racial discrimination claims last year. The case was initially filed in 2020, during Trumps first term, by Kathleen Kraninger, the director appointed by the president to lead the consumer watchdog. But on Wednesday, the new acting director of the CFPB, Russell Vought, sought to vacate the settlement completely and return the six-figure penalty that Townstone had to pay. Once new CFPB leadership undertook the review of the history of this case, it became clear from the totality of internal evidence that this case has suffered from deficiencies on the merits and Townstone was targeted because of its protected speech, the bureau said in its filing to the U.S District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. What was the original case about? The CFPB originally brought the action against Townstone, alleging that it had “discouraged black prospective applicants from applying for mortgage loans with Townstone . . . by making, over a period of years, several statements on their long-form commercial advertisement radio show. The complaint accused the “Townstone Financial Show” of making discriminatory statements that discouraged Black applicants from seeking mortgage loans. It cites five incidents, including some comments made by co-host Barry Sturner, Townstone’s CEO. In one example, for instance, Sturner referred to a downtown Chicago Jewel-Osco grocery store as Jungle Jewel and called it scary due to its diverse patrons. In another, he called Chicagos South Side hoodlum weekend and claimed police were the only force preventing it from becoming a real war zone. The CFPB also alleged that “From 2014 through 2017, barely 2 percent of Townstones mortgage-loan applications were for properties in majority African American neighborhoods, even though they make up nearly 19 percent of the Chicago metropolitan areas census tracts.” In 2023, a federal court in Chicago dismissed the bureaus lawsuit, ruling that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act only applied to actual loan applicants, not prospective ones. However, the bureau appealed, and a panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit overturned the decision. Fast Company reached out to Townstone for comment. In its settlement in 2024, it admitted no wrongdoing. The CFPB’s latest response After reviewing the settlement, the bureau stated in a press release on Wednesday that the, CFPB abused its power, used radical equity arguments to tag Townstone as racist with zero evidence, and spent years persecuting and extorting them all to further the goal of mandating DEI in lending via their regulation by enforcement tactics.” According to the press release, there was no complaint from the public against Townstone but the company was drawn out of hat by a computer model run by “DEI-driven bureaucrats.” It accused the previous CFPB administration of targeting Townstone for its protected free speech, using audio-mining software to review the companys radio shows and podcasts, specifically flagging political speech critical of the bureau. They identified 16 minutes out of nearly 79 hours of radio content (.33%) that they deemed disconcerting,” the press release states, and that could be interpreted as inappropriate, incorrect, or insensitive.” It further claimed that the radio show was only Talking about local crime, political issues around freedom of speech, supporting local law enforcement, and telling people to check out a neighborhood before buying a home. The CFPB said in the recent filing that it supports the dismissal of all claims in order to permit the agency to return to Townstone the civil penalty it paid. The move signals a broader effort by the Trump administration to scale back what it describes as overreach and politically motivated enforcement actions from previous leadership.
Category:
E-Commerce
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