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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 17 2020, @01:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the DIY dept.

The evening current events show As it Happens on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) reports that American engineer Justine Haupt is the creator of a rotary-dial mobile phone.

Listen to the full 5m39s radio interview or read a shortened transcript on-line.

Justine Haupt, who created her own cellphone with a rotary dial, said she did so because she doesn't like how hyper-connected people have become in the world of smartphones.

"You can't browse the internet, it can't text, and all of that is intentional because I have a problem with how hyper-connected everyone is nowadays.

[...]Haupt, a 34-year-old space engineer, explains that although the phone operates on a 3G cellular network, it is not a smartphone.

"It's as un-smart as it can be, intentionally."

Haupt aims to use the phone on a daily basis and tried to make it as compact as possible, so it could fit in a pocket.

The phone does integrate some modern features, such as programmable shortcut buttons for calling specific numbers, a power switch, and a curved e-paper screen that displays basic information such as missed calls.

Though only briefly mentioned in the interview, the phone incorporates open source hardware from Adafruit Industries.

Full project description and documentation can be found on Haupt's webpage: http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/index.html


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:04AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:04AM (#959015)

    Engaging pedantry subroutine...

    I got a really cool tech support story regarding one of those. An old friend of mine was doing "IT" work during this time, if you call working on those switches Internet anything :)

    IT is short for Information Technology, not Internet Technology. As such, using IT to describe such stuff is absolutely apropos.

    Returning success code...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @04:18AM (#959019)

    Possible, but unlikely, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Information+Technology&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CInformation%20Technology%3B%2Cc0 [google.com]
    Information Technology didn't come into use until ~1960, if this can be believed.

    More likely the clever person was a phone repair guy...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @08:22AM (#959072)

    Not so, it will be CT, Communications Technology.
    If only it was a thing... :D

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_and_communications_technology [wikipedia.org]

    CYA

  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:20AM

    by edIII (791) on Tuesday February 18 2020, @02:20AM (#959400)

    Engaging power circuit shutoff...

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.