Candy Bar Phone

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What Does Candy Bar Phone Mean?

A candy bar phone is one of several cell phone form factors in the mobile phone industry. A candy bar mobile phone is rectangular in shape with no lid or hinged enclosure, resembling a traditional candy bar.

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This term is also known as a slab, block or bar phone.

Techopedia Explains Candy Bar Phone

The screen and keypad of a candy bar mobile handset are usually found on one face of the unit. With the keypad exposed, a bar phone is susceptible to accidental dialing. Therefore, most of them are equipped with electronic keypad locks. A candy bar phone is a smaller and more modern version of the bulky brick phone, which was the earliest cell phone form.

Candy bar phones with monochrome screens dominated cell phone screens in the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. The Nokia 1100, a monochrome bar phone, is reported to be the best selling phone ever, having sold over 250 million units since its release in 2003.

Although candy bar phones now come with more advanced features such as colored displays, cameras, digital music players and Web browsing capabilities, these units share the market with other mobile phone factors such as the flip or clamshell, slate, slider and swivel phones.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist
Margaret Rouse
Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.