We all know someone who goes out “to socialize” and ends up looking at their phone more than at their friends.
That’s how the Boring Phone came about: a collaboration between Heineken, Bodega, and HMD that decided to do exactly the opposite of a modern smartphone: remove features to put the conversation back in the spotlight.
The phone has no internet or social media. It can make calls, send messages, and not much else. Even its menu is monochrome and deliberately simple to avoid that feeling of jumping from one app to another.
It also includes a few jokes designed to reinforce the idea. It has a “mailbox” that always appears empty, a fake sports app that basically tells you your team is probably doing fine, and even a feature that reminds you to ask the bartender to call a taxi.
The camera also has a limit: it only lets you save 10 photos at a time, so taking the perfect picture doesn’t end up becoming the focus of the whole outing.
The idea came about after a survey commissioned by Heineken of 4,000 young smartphone users in the United Kingdom and the United States, where 90% admitted that they tend to scroll during an outing.
The Boring Phone was created to make using your phone a little boring and, hopefully, make the person in front of you entertaining again.