The New Scorching Handset Is a Cute and Clear Dumb Cellphone You Can’t Purchase

We’re solely spending an increasing number of time gazing 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 tools inside their respective cellular working methods to curb display screen time. Units just like the Light Phone, designed to behave as a secondary phone with restricted options so you are not gazing Instagram while you’re at a social gathering, are having fun with some reputation. This sort of digital-detox mentality can 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 Cellphone, introduced at the moment forward of Milan Design Week. The corporate manufacturing it’s Human Cellular Units (HMD), higher referred to as the corporate making Nokia-branded phones since 2017 because of a licensing partnership. The Boring Cellphone is cute, clear, and retrolicious. However it isn’t a telephone you should purchase.

At Mobile World Congress in February 2024, the Finnish firm introduced it was leaning in on the Human Cellular Units branding versus the acronym HMD and that it could broaden its scope by collaborating with different manufacturers outdoors of Nokia as a white-label telephone producer. The large 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 gadget, however The Boring Cellphone hails from a collaboration with Heineken (sure, the beer model) and trend model Bodega.

This function telephone (colloquially known as “dumb” telephones) can solely textual content and make telephone calls. There’s a digicam, Twin SIM assist, 4G connectivity, a headphone jack, and a Micro USB port for charging. The battery can final per week in standby time, however there are not 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 in style 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 penning this piece. It’s attractive.