The Boring Phone
heineken.com
heineken.com
It’s unclear to me why a beer company paired up with a fashion company to make a smartphone, but the site doesn’t really explain much. I didn’t see a price, release date or specs. The site is behind an age wall and additionally an e-mail wall to receive any useful info. Overall, terrible execution on the marketing front IMO
Any businesses that succeed primarily because of direct social engagement would benefit from this, and given what seems like a growing sentiment among many overly-connected people that “I just wish I could go back to a feature phone”, it makes a lot of sense to me that we’d see investment in this space from the alcohol/fashion industries. If they’re thinking ahead, they’d be eager to address the growing desire for re-establishing IRL social structures and finding a way to unplug from this presently toxic iteration of social media.
The existing tech industry is not incentivized to actually create products like this. It’s intriguing to me that there’s big money interested in making this happen.
The goal of this was accomplished the moment it was posted here and we are talking about it, as many other millions around the world are.
Great execution on the marketing front, they only had to put together a landing page and some prototype renders, they are even gathering a bunch of emails for free!
I expect an oversaturation of dates like 1/1/80. Hell, I guess we can use 9/9/99 now too.
That's what this feels like.
Mostly beacuse someone at the company thought it would be fun and it's someone else's money they are spending.
Granted, we have an insane microbrew industry for some reason, so the wall is 37 garbage IPAs that all taste like a burnt eraser and 1 sour if you are lucky.
Nearly every pub/bar here has an entire wall display dedicated to which beers are available. They vary from the chalkboard to brass plaques!
OMG, so on top of it all, it's a Nokia.
Excellent.
I very much vibe with this life and the idea behind the phone, however it still just isn't practice, I still want to have a great camera in my pocket. I still need maps sometimes or one or two apps.
> Currently, there are 11 apps on the iPhone that you can’t delete. These apps are essential to the iPhone and deleting them could cause problems. However, you can still hide apps from the Home Screen.
The apps that your can’t delete are:
App Store Camera Clock Find My Health Messages Phone Photos Safari Settings Wallet
Wouldn't the more logical approach be to expose these services (even in parallel!) in simpler form that could be interacted with in text form?
For all the apps you mentioned, I don't think of a fundamental UX reason they couldn't be.
You already screwed it up! How did you screw it up so fast?
Mine is a glorified iPod. I don't know where it is half the time.
Suggesting how to use a phone less would be far more constructive but also more difficult because it requires engagement rather than drive by commenting.
Telling someone “you should be more responsible” is an ineffective way to get them to act responsibly.
I'm sorry, people from the future aren't cool enough to know about this phone.
Are there any monochrome LCD phones that work on a modern cell network?
T9 w/ physical buttons is so much nicer than a touch screen keyboard. I can also type w/o looking at the phone. I sent so many texts one-handed w/ my Nokia 1100 back in the early 2000s.
Texts, with an ugly interface, are inherently less "sticky" in terms of attention than modern apps/notifications.
You still had people texting at parties, but phones generally stayed in pockets more, because they were... boring!
The manufacturers are missing out by not dressing their prison tech up with 90s nostalgia marketing and selling it on Amazon.