I owned a Bang & Olufsen flip phone for the best part of a decade, retiring it in 2019 for perhaps the most unique and fitting of causes. I never had a smartphone for a number of reasons, among which was that, while their functionality appealed, everything seemed so relatively homogeneous. My old phone would start real life conversations. It surely expressed some part of me. People often said it looked like something from Star Trek (a bit like a communicator, even if not a smartphone), which I enjoyed before I even had full appreciation of that context.
Ironically/fittingly, it was an actual Star Trek communicator that became the catalyst for change. I’m a huge geek over film props and iconography, and had become a firmer fan of Trek in recent years – and I thought, that fateful day, holding this in my hand (feeling so ‘right’) ‘too bad this doesn’t flip open to a screen and a working Star Trek communicator smartphone’. Wouldn’t that be something? I’d happily upgrade (even if somewhat anachronistically) if that were the case. Then a pal threw down the gauntlet. Make it so. An initial dismissal but a bit of research later, I wondered that it might just be possible. And perhaps, where no-one has gone before?
Did I succeed? Well, watch me take a call. I do think, strangely, it is the unexpected yet perfect spiritual successor of my original phone: as well as functioning fantastically, it provides that comparably novel user experience, and also surely expresses something of me now; where and who I am, ten years later.
And it most definitely looks like something from Star Trek.
Star Trek Communicator Smartphone
Buttons ‘machined’ out of stainless steel and brass.
An additional flip-down panel allows access to the lower buttons of the phone. The hinges of this part are made from stainless steel bike spokes. The panel itself is hand carved from aircraft grade aluminium.
In ‘case’ you’re wondering, the casing began as a non-functioning Wand Company bluetooth communicator handset. If you just want to take calls like Captain Kirk, you don’t have to do what I did! While not a phone itself, the handset is a well-built, highly faithful communicator prop replica that connects to your smartphone to give you the most all-round show-accurate user experience. I think they did a great job with it.
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