Square cell phones we have known (photos)

The Motorola Flipout--the only smartphone of the bunch--is a true square phone, measuring 2.6 inches tall and wide. The Flipout's face swivels to reveal a quite roomy QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately, the 2.8-inch display is too small to give justice to the Android operating system.

Making its market push in gray and pink for U.S. Cellular, the bite-size Samsung Gloss was for small hands.

Another palm-size cell that's a tad taller than it is wide, the Motorola Karma QA1 debuted in August 2009 as an excellent feature phone.

Never our favorite phone, the Motorola Hint QA30 was nevertheless part of the square phone trend that played out in 2009, originally offered for Cricket, MetroPCS, and Alltel. The Hint stands 3.2 inches high by 2.4 inches wide.

The keyboard and stylish design of the original LG Lotus won us over. In a repeat performance, the LG Lotus Elite further strikes us with its external touch screen, and great QWERTY keyboard and call quality.

Microsoft's Kin One will live in infamy (along with its cousin, the Kin Two) as a phone that was discontinued just six weeks after it came to life. The Kin One's unique compact shell design held some advanced features nevertheless, like a 5-megapixel camera and 4GB of memory.