This Rotary Dial Cell Phone Is A Totally Impractical But Totally Brilliant Take On A Retro Classic

Remember rotary telephones? Your answer to that question will be a telling sign of your age. For some people they were the latest technology (although that would've been over 100 years ago), for others they're a retro-style phone you can buy in Urban Outfitters.

As their name suggests they featured rotary dials instead of keypads that took forever to dial a number with. In their day they were revolutionary, but now they're more suited to a museum. Unless you're YouTuber Mr. Volt who has created a portable cell phone version using this vintage dialling method.

Called the Rotary Cell Phone Prototype it's built from aluminum, brass, wood, and 3D printed plastic—making it bulky, but it's got some modern touches like an OLED display.

It has six functions, one is dial (which is quite laborious and Mr Volt needs a stylus to do it properly as the holes are so small), the second is memory, although storage is low and amounts to one solo phone number. It can also send a text message, has an FM radio, has system settings so you can check the battery life, and can go in "sleep mode." As for the tech behind it, it runs on a mini Arduino and has an Adafruit microcomputer to power it.

All in all it's a pretty neat piece of retro-inspired tech, totally impractical of course, but a fun antidote to the shiny glass metal device you carry around in your pocket. Or at least it is for most of us.

You can almost hear the steady drooling of hipsters from here as they see this.