Guo Qing Goes Back to Basics With a Minimalistic Phone, That Won the Red Dot Design Award 2015

We’ve seen our 

share of concepts, high tech phones with ubercool features, modular devices and crazy specs. However, sometimes designers just go back to basics and return to the roots and core of concepts. For example designer Guo Qing has envisioned the minimalistic phone below, that managed to win the Red Dot Award for Design 2015.

The core of the idea goes like this: since this model doesn’t have a screen or keypad, all those extra functions of a modern mobile phone are removed and the fundamentals are kept. This handset can serve as a wallet and business card case and the device is meant to address the issue of global smartphone addiction. The designer killed off all components that made the device convenient to use, in order to free people from addiction to smartphones.

The body of this handset is made of wood, linen and straw fabric, in order to adopt a more eco-friendly approach. You need to perform a special sequence in order to dial a number and this complexity is supposed to make it harder to make unnecessary calls. Somehow this feels like a phone that Ikea would make.