A Rotary Dial Cell Phone for the Old at Heart

Even if you sometimes long for the “good ol’ days” or get a pang of nostalgia when you see a rotary dial phone hanging on the wall (in a museum, I guess), I’m not sure there is really anyone who thinks rotary dial was like, more efficient or the way to go.

Image Credit: Justine Haupt

That said, if you’re totally into retro things and living like the pioneers did – or you just cannot wrap your brain around modern technology no matter how hard you try – you’re going to love this effort from engineer Justine Haupt of the Cosmology Instrumentation Group at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Because she’s created a totally new cellphone that uses a rotary dial instead of those newfangled touch screens everyone’s always going on about.

Image Credit: Justine Haupt

To make it, she used a dial from a classic Trimline telephone and crafted the body from an Arduino interface and Adafruit parts.

She actually had the idea for the phone, and put that plan into action, for herself – she was tired of being distracted by the bells and whistles offered by her modern phone.

Image Credit: Justine Haupt

“Why a rotary cellphone?”

She writes on her website.

“Because in a finicky, annoying, touchscreen world of hyperconnected people using phones they have no control over or understanding of, I wanted something that would be entirely mine, personal, and absolutely tactile, while also giving me an excuse for not texting.

So it’s not just a show-and-tell piece. My intent is to use it as my 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.”