$499 Anti-Smartphone for People Who Hate Phone
As much as we want to get rid of technology, we can never totally get rid of it, especially when our work and relationship depends on it. That’s the price we pray for living in the 21st century.
However, if you need to take a break from the constant stress of technology, there are two things you can do. You either toss your smartphone in a drawer, go some place that’s off the grid, and enjoy life without the annoyances of the constant beeping of your cellphone. Or you can save $499 and get yourself a Runcible.
The Runcible is an experimental new take on the phone by California-based startup Monohm. It comes in a peculiar disk shape designed to replace the smartphone, and it is available in reclaimed ocean plastics and sustainable wood.
The designers refer to the Runcible as an anti-smartphone, which probably makes sense as soon as you look at the device because of its odd form. It is spherical but flat, definitely not your traditional smartphone.
It is modeled after the traditional pocket watch though it has lots of phone thingy. It has on its back a 7-megapixel camera, on its front a rounded 2.5 inch screen display that boast of 640×640 resolution, and a host of electronic stuff inside. You can use it to make calls using a bluetooth headset. It also has a WiFi and a 2.0 standard USB, and it runs on 1.2 GHz Snapdragon 410 chip and 1GB of RAM.
In other words, it is far from a powerhouse, but isn’t that the point for being an anti-smartphone?
Perhaps, the most notable thing about the Runcible is that, unlike other smartphones, it will not create notifications by default. As the Monohm CEO and co-founder Aubrey Anderson explained, “[the Runcible is] made specifically to avoid pulling out of the real world, especially if you are enjoying it.”
