We’re solely spending increasingly time looking at our smartphones, and over the previous few years, tech corporations have tried to supply salves to this very drawback they created. Apple and Google launched instruments inside their respective cellular working techniques to curb display screen time. Gadgets just like the Gentle Telephone, designed to behave as a secondary cellphone with restricted options so you are not looking at Instagram whenever you’re at a social gathering, are having fun with some recognition. This sort of digital-detox mentality can also be behind a wave of AI-powered devices just like the Humane Ai Pin, which guarantees to dump some smartphone-native duties to voice controls on a screenless interface.
The most recent to hop on the pattern is The Boring Telephone, introduced at present forward of Milan Design Week. The corporate manufacturing it’s Human Cellular Gadgets (HMD), higher often called the corporate making Nokia-branded telephones since 2017 because of a licensing partnership. The Boring Telephone is cute, clear, and retrolicious. However it’s not a cellphone you should purchase.
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At Cellular World Congress in February 2024, the Finnish firm introduced it was leaning in on the Human Cellular Gadgets branding versus the acronym HMD and that it might broaden its scope by collaborating with different manufacturers outdoors of Nokia as a white-label cellphone producer. The large announcement on the time was the Barbie flip cellphone—stemming from a partnership with Mattel—coming this summer season. We don’t have any new particulars about that system, however The Boring Telephone hails from a collaboration with Heineken (sure, the beer model) and style model Bodega.
This function cellphone (colloquially known as “dumb” telephones) can solely textual content and make cellphone calls. There’s a digital camera, Twin SIM help, 4G connectivity, a headphone jack, and a Micro USB port for charging. The battery can final per week in standby time, however there aren’t any apps. Besides Snake. Sure, you may play Snake on this gadget.
Bodega is behind the design, citing the rise of “Newtro” (new and retro) as inspiration with Gen Z—the modernization of in style devices from the Eighties and ’90s. That has resulted in a clear flip cellphone with holographic stickers and inexperienced accents in a nod to the Heineken partnership. Actually, the look of this handset is half the explanation I’m scripting this piece. It’s beautiful.
