The mystery of the power bank phone taking over Ghana 11 years ago
I worked on Siemens' Xelibri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xelibri) brand of phones. The problem was the lack of usability studies or real technical innovation. We basically chopped up existing Siemens models and tried to squeeze them in a "cool" looking housing without causing to much retooling for the manufacturing people.
Many of the examples you listed did the same. Different for the sake of being different doesn't work out.