You told us: You’d resurrect this dead smartphone brand

We haven’t seen many new entrants into the smartphone business within the last few years, and it’s easy to see why. The industry is dominated by a select few, while others are often left to fight for scraps.

Unfortunately, we’ve also seen plenty of dead smartphone brands over the years as a result. But we wondered which dead brand readers would revive if they could do so. We posed this question earlier this week, and here’s what you told us.

Which dead smartphone brand would you resurrect?

Results

We posted this poll on November 14, and it was a very popular one indeed. Over 4,500 votes were cast, and it turns out that the top choice was BlackBerry (40.65%).

BlackBerry itself effectively left the smartphone space in 2016 when it announced that it would outsource hardware development to other players such as TCL. However, TCL in turn stopped making BlackBerry-branded handsets in 2020. These phones nevertheless stood out thanks to the physical keypad and variety of productivity and privacy features.

Opinion: Nokia, BlackBerry, Palm — We should stop trying to revive dead phone brands

In second place was LG with 34.09% of the vote. The Korean brand announced just over a year ago that it would be exiting the smartphone business, bringing an end to a long run of devices. The brand also stood out thanks to its focus on the audio experience, as well as some weird ideas like the LG Wing and second screen case.

Rounding out the podium was our “other” choice with 9.07% of the vote. Readers left comments voting for Microsoft’s Lumia handsets, HTC (essentially a zombie brand at this point), Nextbit (acquired by Razer), and the Nexus line.

Finally, Essential and Palm brought up the rear, accounting for 8.32% and 7.86% of the vote respectively.

Comments

• Phillip Roey: Microsoft/Lumia I really liked the Windows 10 Phone OS and used mine pretty much until it died
• Riku_Xander: LG was always so experimental and I loved it.
• BCP: HTC. It’s a dead brand right now
• Ralph Angelo: The Lumia series. It had such a unique and colorful aesthetic.
• Dion: Nexus. Loved my 5
• Jeff: NextBit
• John Quincy Adams: Simple, Blackberry. I would have chosen HTC but apparently they’re barely surviving. Blackberry brand with a Pixel skin would be awesome. I miss the keyboard feature. Give it a Pixel camera and Pixel AI….let’s go Google.
• meh…: I still miss my BlackBerry Passport…