There are people who fundamentally do not want to use modern smartphones, preferring old push-button “mobile phones”. But their “oddities” (at least from the point of view of today’s youth) are nothing compared to Justine Haupt’s hobby – this girl is working on a project of… a mobile phone with a disk dialer. She calls her phone Rotary Un-Smartphone and creates it practically from scratch.

She started working on it as a personal project “for herself” five years ago (when she worked as an engineer for astronomical instruments at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York), the first model was ready three years later, in 2020 based on Arduino and spare parts of old disk phones.

When Justine Haupt shared it online, she received many inquiries about whether it could be purchased. Although she had no intention of making it for sale at first, she eventually “gave up”. Then she sold a hundred build-it-yourself kits, after which decided to start the second improved version – the Rotary Un-Smartphone itself.

And finally, the second model is ready and working, as you can see in this video.

Rotary Un-Smartphone works on LTE networks and, unlike the first version, does not use old parts — all its components were created specifically for this project, including the dialer and mechanical bell. Justine admits that she even had to program the front-facing OLED display that displays an incoming call herself — even though she’s not a programmer.

The Rotary Un-Smartphone can make local and long-distance calls, and even supports speed dialing from your contact list (they are stored on a microSD card and displayed on the rear E-ink display).

The disk “mobile phone” can already be pre-ordered for $390 — it will also be delivered in the form of a kit for self-assembly. It is planned to start sending orders in the spring of 2023.