You can now own a mobile phone with a rotary dial — if that’s really something you want

One woman has come up with a strange Frankenstein of old and new technology that she thinks might be the perfect mobile phone.

While some would be quite literally lost without theirs, smartphones that give us access to a world of information in our pocket but constantly ask to be pulled out of there and stared at have become so complicated many people now find them annoying.

This has triggered the rise of “dumbphones”, which look like the mobile phones of the past while still having some modern technologies.

These devices range from the quite cheap to the weirdly expensive.

Some customers opt for these phones to disconnect from the always online world – while others merely want to be seen to be doing so.

But if you’re looking for the ultimate disconnected phone, one tinkerer has the perfect device.

Justine Haupt is an associate scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

She’s also the creator of the open source Rotary Cellphone, a mobile phone with a tactile spinning dial like the kind that was common on house phones until around the 1980s.

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Justine Haupt has created a mobile phone with a rotary dial. Picture: Justine Haupt

She said it makes better calls than a modern smartphone. Picture: Justine Haupt

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Ms Haupt began work on the Rotary Cellphone because she was sick of smartphones.

“I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting,” Ms Haupt said on the project’s page.

She added it wasn’t about trying to seem from another time, but to demonstrate that not all innovation is necessarily good.

“It’s to show that it’s possible to have a perfectly usable phone that goes as far from having a touchscreen as I can imagine, and which in some ways may actually be more functional.”

While the phone can’t look up maps, play music, or even send text messages, unlike many smartphones, it’s great at its one main task – making phone calls.

“Reception is excellent … when I want a phone I don’t have to navigate through menus to get to the phone ‘application’. That’s bulls**t,” Ms Haupt said.

You can store a couple phone numbers of your frequent contacts. Picture: Justine Haupt

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While the rotary dial is used to make calls, given its cumbersome nature, it’s not designed to be used all the time.

“The point isn’t to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use.”

Instead, the phone has several speed dial buttons that can be used to store your most frequent contacts.

“The people I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new number or do something like set the volume, then I can use the fun and satisfying-to-use rotary dial,” Ms Haupt said.

She intends to use it as her primary phone.

“It fits in a pocket, it’s reasonably compact, calling the people I most often call is faster than with my old phone, and the battery lasts almost 24 hours.”

Making her perfect phone was far from easy. Picture: Justine Haupt

A second prototype proved easier to build into an enclosure. Picture: Justine Haupt

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While using the phone is fast and easy, the process of building was anything but.

Ms Haupt began the build by laying everything out to make sure it worked, before stuffing it all into a 3D-printed enclosure.

A second prototype focused on making the enclosure easier to pull apart and access, allowing her to tweak things as needed without breaking it.

The second prototype “worked but it had all sorts of issues”.

Ms Haupt said it was “tantalisingly close” to the phone she really wanted, but the battery life was only a couple hours, and she’d made one big mistake in the design.

“I didn’t realise the 2G networks are shutting down,” Ms Haupt said.

She found out after she had already installed a 2G modem in the phone.

The current design uses a 3G modem and a low-power version of the original microcontroller used to power the phone. A microcontroller is a small and simple version of the powerful system-on-chip computers that power modern smartphones.

The Rotary Cellphone is deliberately less feature-packed than those phones, but it does have one thing that’s usually only found on expensive models costing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

The curved ePaper display which cascades off the side of the phone shows important information like missed calls, messages and contacts.

Ms Haupt said that feature was “a later development in the creative process but it’s now my favourite part”.

The black and white display, similar to one used on an e-reader, means it doesn’t drain the battery.

It’s not a touchscreen but it gives you the information you need. Picture: Justine Haupt

The project started out as a “quick and dirty” one, but given the substantial attention it’s received, Ms Haupt recently began selling a kit for those interested to make their own through a robotics company she founded with her husband David.

But it’s hardly a cheap or easy process.

“I never intended this phone to be something other people would use,” Ms Haupt said on the store page, which details how much work the project takes and the extra equipment you’ll need to build the phone yourself.

It’s really for people who are already decently skilled in the maker hobby, where enthusiasts build their own electronics or hack existing ones to their needs.

The kit costs $US170 ($A254) and will take at least six weeks to show up.

There are easier ways to ditch the smartphone, like the retro Nokia 8110.

Or a device from Swiss company Punkt.

If you’re looking for a quicker and possibly cheaper way to ditch your smartphone, there are now plenty of dumbphones available on the market.

Nokia still sells phones like the ones that made the company a household name, which start at $90.

Some of them have 4G capabilities meaning you can still use the phone to access mobile data networks, allowing you to use it as a wireless hotspot for other, smarter devices.

More expensive phones like the MP02 from Swiss electronics company Punkt do the same thing but cost more than $500.

Have you thought about ditching your smartphone for a simpler alternative? Let us know what you think in the comments below.