The New Hot Handset Is a Cute and Transparent Dumb Phone You Can’t Buy

We’re solely spending an increasing number of time looking at our smartphones, and over the previous few years, tech firms have tried to supply salves to this very downside they created. Apple and Google launched instruments inside their respective cell working programs to curb display screen time. Gadgets just like the Gentle Cellphone, designed to behave as a secondary telephone with restricted options so you are not looking at Instagram whenever you’re at a social gathering, are having fun with some recognition. This type 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 development is The Boring Cellphone, introduced immediately forward of Milan Design Week. The corporate manufacturing it’s Human Cell Gadgets (HMD), higher referred to as the corporate making Nokia-branded telephones since 2017 due to a licensing partnership. The Boring Cellphone is cute, clear, and retrolicious. However it isn’t a telephone you should buy.

At Cell World Congress in February 2024, the Finnish firm introduced it was leaning in on the Human Cell Gadgets branding versus the acronym HMD and that it might broaden its scope by collaborating with different manufacturers exterior of Nokia as a white-label telephone producer. The massive announcement on the time was the Barbie flip telephone—stemming from a partnership with Mattel—coming this summer season. We don’t have any new particulars about that machine, however The Boring Cellphone hails from a collaboration with Heineken (sure, the beer model) and vogue model Bodega.

This characteristic telephone (colloquially known as “dumb” telephones) can solely textual content and make telephone 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’ll be able to 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 standard devices from the Nineteen Eighties and ’90s. That has resulted in a clear flip telephone with holographic stickers and inexperienced accents in a nod to the Heineken partnership. Truthfully, the look of this handset is half the rationale I’m scripting this piece. It’s attractive.