Based on materials from android-softwares.com
Many of us suffer (or enjoy?) From the habit of holding a smartphone in our hands and doing something with it. Not at all because of some urgent, real need, but simply because the apparatus is next to us. Recognized yourself in this scenario? Do you also constantly reach for your favorite device simply because you can? Austrian designer Clemens Schillinger has developed an original way to cope with smartphone addiction for those who cannot imagine themselves without feeling a gadget in their hand. And that means for you and me.
It is difficult to say how one can define the contraptions invented by Schillinger. Smartphone substitutes? Ersatz smartphones? In general, these are such blocks, similar to smartphones, which the creator calls Substitute Phones. The Austrian genius was inspired by the idea of a compulsive, that is, an obsessive need to check his smartphone. Each type of 'smartphone replacer' has a built-in set of beads that roll under your fingers when you slide them over the surface, imitating the usual gestures of interacting with the gadget – swiping up and down, unlocking or pinching. Thus, the feeling of using a modern mobile phone for a person who experiences an irresistible need to perform these actions is reconstructed.
According to Dezeen, who shared this design know-how with readers, Substitute Phones serve as a 'therapeutic tool' to help addicted smartphone owners cope with withdrawal from situations where they stop using their real devices.
Substitute Phone, however, is not intended to be entertainment in lieu of interacting with a real smartphone. They simply copy the mechanism in the absence of real action. Recently, with frightening persistence, articles have appeared on how smartphone use is associated with mental problems (especially depression). So a seemingly stupid idea may indeed serve a good cause – trying to cope with a problem that is unlikely to become less urgent in the near future. Probably the same can be said about any thing that will help us spend less time online.
The replacement smartphone is not the first such device invented by an Austrian designer in an effort to help people overcome their smartphone habits. For example, look at a lamp that lights up only when you 'feed' it to the gadget that enslaved you.
[iframe url = '// www.youtube.com/embed/SUxRhYDnZcI']
Schillinger intends to sell Substitute Phone through his online store, the price of the trick is still unknown.
What do you think of such a concept? Can an invention help you overcome smartphone addiction, or do you not suffer from such addiction at all?