In 2002 or thereabouts, someone turned a full sized desktop rotary phone (the square kind, no the rectangular kind that typically hung on the wall) into a GSM cell phone. They basically made something that converted the pulses or clicks or whatever from the dial into something that would signal the keypad of the GSM phone they were working with. So basically you could walk around with this big rotary phone on the street in your hand and talk from it.

The one in the video is definitely a lot more convenient!

The rotary phone bit is a bit much, but it is rad that she made it not bought it.

That said, these will sell because the dumb phone movement is catching on with kids. Want a weird sentence?

"I have a plastic 'Thank You' bag loaded to the brim with unlocked Nokia brick phones."

I should probably pull that out of storage and sell them.

the bell is a fantastic touch

I mean, cool. But it seems like something you'd use a few times and show to people and then realize is pretty inconvenient for purely aesthetic reasons and put in a cabinet somewhere and forget about. A lot of "cool internet/kickstarter" products fall into this category.

It would be neat if you could flip it open and have a screen inside you can just do normal smart phone stuff with. And by neat I mean dumb.

The rotary thing is just silly.. But the following features are great and should be on every phone..
Physical off switch that actually disconnects power to phone
Physical mic off switch that actually disconnects power to mic.
Open source design
Open source software
low level access for users
You can flash it with whatever image u want
It comes as a kit so your'e encouraged to repair and modify it.

So, on balance its better than a conventional modern phone imo.

My nephews and their friends are crazy for old tech.

They're into vinyl albums and instant cameras.

I gave my younger nephew my old CD player and access to my disc collection.

There's something about physically manipulating things that appeals to the human brain.

I can see these selling very well.

A rare e-paper display?