New Phone Who’s This

Engineer at New York’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, Justine Haupt has spent the last three years of her free time creating a mobile phone with a rotary dial. Aside from the device looking amazing, it’s practical too! The phones battery lasts up to 30 hours, fits in a pocket and get better reception than some smart phones. Haupt said, “If I want to call my husband, I can call him by pushing a single button, I can call people more quickly on this phone than on my old phone. In rare cases when I want to call a new number, I do use the rotary dial and it is a fun, tactile experience.”

Though the device doesn’t allow the user to text it does have a curved ePaper, the same material used on Kindles. The ePaper on the back displays contact list information and alerts for having missed calls in a “pager style.” Unfortunately, making your own phone does not provide your cell with a free calling feature- it takes an AT&T prepaid sim card. To the untrained eye, this phone kit may seem doable for any average Joe to build but it’s a little more complicated of a process than just an unboxing and charging session. The rotary phone kit which includes the circuit board and the 3D printed parts, from her company has everything you need except for a handful of necessary pieces like the rotary dial itself. “Now I’m looking at making a more inclusive kit that will come with everything you need,” Haupt added. Phone kits can be purchased at SkysEdge for $170.