Let’s talk about smartphone colors

I’m sure everyone has a recurring pet-peeve with phone launches.  One could be storage size.  Another could be compromising battery capacity for thinness.  Well, mine is COLORS.

Before you turn away to avoid hearing more from a crazy person, hold up.  Seriously.  We’re humans, we like to express and differentiate ourselves.  I mean, speaking of Android itself, consider all the customization we can do.

But then when it comes to phone hardware, we are too often just stuck with two choices, black or white.  Yes, flagships tend to throw in another, like gold or a different shade of grey, but come on.

What’s worse is that sometimes OEM’s display several color at their launch, but you can’t get them!  For instance, the Xperia Z3 launched with four color options, but you could only get black at T-Mobile (for the Verizon Z3v, only black or white).  Remember that emerald green S6 shown at the launch event?  It is so scarce it might as well not exist.

What may be even worse is releasing a sweet color months after the phone’s release!  Such as these:

Droid Turbo, sapphire blue

HTC M7/M8, red (and blue)

Note 4, pink

And do you remember the S5 coming out in electric blue as a Best Buy exclusive?  That’s like kicking somebody when they’re down.

Now, to give the manufacturers the benefit of the doubt, they don’t know how successful the phone will be.  So I can buy that they prefer to be cautious.  We also don’t know the manufacturing cost associated with throwing in another color.  Nonetheless, I feel that color is important in the appeal of a device and should not be overlooked.

This is the part where I give Motorola a shout out, for evolution of Moto Maker:

Are you annoyed by continual color limitation as well?