The feature-free phone, launched at Milan design week, is the latest device to tap into young people’s concerns about attention-harvesting and data privacy
Tech sales executive Piers Garrett, 27, says he has a coffee and reads a book in the morning, rather than scrolling through his phone.Tech sales executive Piers Garrett, 27, says he has a coffee and reads a book in the morning, rather than scrolling through his phone.
The latest model is a collaboration between Heineken beer and the fashion retailer Bodega, and caused a storm when it was unveiled this month at Milan design week, the place where trends are anointed by the world’s designers. The Boring Phone is part of a new dumbphone boom, built on thetowards the data- and attention-harvesting technologies they have grown up with.
Nostalgia for the Nokia 3310, the “brick” phone with seemingly everlasting battery life, prompted its relaunch in 2017, but the boom really began in the US last year and was, ironically, fuelled by TikTokers posting under the #bringbackflipphones hashtag. HMD, which was behind the Nokia relaunch, saw its flip phone sales double by April 2023, while Punkt, which prefers to call them feature phones or minimalist phones, has also seen substantial sales increases.
This move to offlining, or digital minimalism, is also seen in gen Z’s declining use of social media. They are the only generation whose time on social media has fallen since 2021, according to GWI, another research company, although older people are digitally detoxing too – including Lars Silberbauer, HMD’s chief marketing officer. “For the first four hours, you’re getting a bit of anxiety,” he said. “But then suddenly you start focusing and you get back to behaviours you used to have.
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