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Hands On With the Sparkliest Phone at MWC

The Kyocera Honeybee 201K literally sparkles. It's horrible. I love it.

By Alex Colon
February 27, 2013
Kyocera Honeybee 201K

BARCELONA - Robert Pattinson may not be at MWC, but he wouldn't be the only thing here that sparkles in sunlight. The Kyocera Honeybee 201K has glitter embedded into its pink plastic design. Where was this phone when I was a child?

The Honeybee 201K is atrocious. And yet I can't take my eyes off it. I hate it. But I want one. If I sound a bit conflicted, click through the slideshow and see how you react. That's not the only color option, mind you. Whereas I took a liking to the pink model with purple accents, you can choose from similarly loud options like orange and yellow. I appreciate the attention to detail, like the faux-metallic sheen on the Power button.

The display is a 3.7-inch, 800-by-480-pixel TFT panel that looks pretty good. Even better are the cartoony physical control keys underneath it. And it's hard to see in the photos, but this phone is covered in glitter, which is shielded by a layer of translucent plastic. Naturally, you get a loop in the top right corner for cell phone charms, like the honeybee on display here.

Spec-wise, this is a surprisingly decent phone, which you probably wouldn't imagine given the design. It's powered by a dual-core 1.5-GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 processor. There's an 8.1-megapixel autofocus camera on the back, and a 2-megapixel camera on the front. Naturally, Android 4.1.1 (Jelly Bean) has been given a playful makeover.

A microSD slot allows for memory expansion to an additional 64GB, and the 2000mAh battery should keep the phone running all day. There's even support for 5GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. That's a lot more than you get with most of the kid-focused phones I've seen.

MWC Bug Art

And believe it or not, the Honeybeek 201K is actually the successor to an earlier model, the Honeybee 101K, which you'll also find in the slideshow. And even though the 101K I saw was blue, it's even sparklier than the pink 201K! A note on glitter to Kyocera: the more the merrier.

Unfortunately, the Honeybee is distributed by SoftBank in Japan, so we'll probably never get our hands on one in the U.S. Still, I just couldn't resist sharing. 

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About Alex Colon

Executive Editor, Reviews

I’m PCMag’s executive editor of reviews, steering our coverage to make sure we're testing the products you're interested in buying and telling you whether they're worth it. I've been here for more than 10 years. I previously managed the consumer electronics reviews team, and before that I covered mobile, smart home, and wearable technology for PCMag and Gigaom. 

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