Novelty flip phone strips out almost every feature possible

Those who find modern smartphones too distracting from real life might be interested in the Boring Phone (no relation to the smartphone of the same name), a novelty flip phone based on HMD’s Nokia 2660 Flip.

The Boring Phone was born out of a collaboration between Bodega and Heineken (yes, the beer company) and aims to provide a feature-light phone experience. It bills itself as “without almost any feature,” such as Wi-Fi, a selfie camera, push notifications, and especially social media.

Though there are some games, like Snake and Tetris; honestly, do you really need anything else?

The phone’s official page does a great job of outlining what it can’t do, but not so much what it can. However, it appears that the Boring Phone is a reskin of the Nokia 2660 Flip, which helpfully does have a spec sheet. The phone’s core hardware components are its ripping fast single-core T107 from Unisoc, a whopping 48 MB of LPDDR2 RAM, and a hefty 128 MB for internal storage. A microSD card slot enables an extra 32 GB of storage to be added.

Other highlights includes the inner and outer displays, each with a 320 by 240 pixel resolution, the 0.3 megapixel outer camera, a 1,450 mAh battery that allows for up to six hours of talk time on 4G networks (even more on 2G and 3G), Bluetooth 4.2, and a 3.5mm headphone jack, something that even the latest smartphones don’t always have.

Of course, Bodega and Heineken changed some things around. The UI has a custom, GameBoy-esque green and black color palette, and the chassis is now made of clear plastic that exposes the internal hardware. It is of course branded with the Heineken and Bodega logos too, and comes with stickers with even more logos.

The Boring Phone apparently won’t be sold at retail, but instead 5,000 units will be given away per the Verge, as this is just a marketing stunt in the end. The UK will be the first to get in on the giveaways, with other regions joining later.

Plus, Heineken also plans to launch an app that imitates the UI of the Boring Phone in case non-winners want to experience it. ®