Undoubtedly, smartphones have become an “extension of the hand”, as the majority of people, especially teenagers, use them throughout the day. This is due to the fact that smartphones provide users with numerous applications, such as social media, which are used for messaging, watching videos, sharing photos and more, resulting in users being distracted from other daily activities, while they choose to spend their time in a fictional world, in a virtual reality.
Given this data, a space engineer, Justine Haupt, has come up with a seemingly unorthodox solution. Specifically, she has invented a mobile phone that harks back to another era, as it is reminiscent of the landline phones that were used a few decades ago. This mobile phone, called the “Rotary Cellphone”, has certain features. First, it has a strange circular wheel built into its top. This feature will remind users of older generations of an era when they made calls by rotating a plastic wheel. It will be as if they were transported to a parallel universe where the evolution of mobile phones took a completely different turn and modern technological features, such as touch screens, do not seem to have come to fruition in it. In addition, this mobile phone, although it looks old-fashioned and outdated, borrows some features from smartphones:
- a 10 LED signal meter,
- programmable shortcut buttons for specific calls,
- power switch that turns on and off naturally and
- a curved e-paper display that includes two sections so that information such as missed calls can be displayed on the side.
Furthermore, Justine Haupt on her website provides many details about how she designed and built the “Rotary Cellphone”. In particular, she states that the rotary disk was salvaged from a Western Electric Trimline telephone which contained hardware more compact than other rotary phones that existed decades ago. This, along with the necessary electronics required to implement the dial interface with modern cellular chipsets, was “equipped” with a specially designed board manufactured in China and then incorporated into a 3D printed housing. The “Rotary Cellphone” due to its large size does not fit in a pocket, however it is compact and light enough that users can pick it up and hold it to their ear for the entire duration of a call.
Finally, Justine Haupt has shared on her website not only photos of how she designed and built the “Rotary Cellphone”, but also “raw” schematics and links containing all the original design files, which were released as open-source materials, allowing anyone with the know-how to create their own “Rotary Cellphone”.
