In furniture antique means at least a hundred years old but in the world of phones I’m seeing the word “antique” being used for all pulse dialing phones. Mine is 50 years old, it’s an Ericsson Dialog rotary dial phone.
How? Via Bluetooth to a cellphone.
Is this eco friendly? Nope, it’s another wallwart + the electronics in the Bluetooth box itself.
Is it solarpunk or preppery? No, it’s 100% reliant on the cellphone network working. And the power grid. It adds no redundancy or failsafedness, it’s all serially connected.
Is it better audio quality than talking on the cellphone? I don’t know: The Bluetooth step is only lossy so the antique phone’s speaker and mic would have to be that much better to outweigh that lossiness.
Is it better audio quality than I remember talking on the landline being? Sweden’s landline system had an overhaul in the early nineties and this sounds better than before the overhaul but worse than after the overhaul. It also sounds much better than the old cordless home phone my parents had as their last landline. My phone’s 4g which sounds pretty good. 1g and 2g sounded awful and this (even through BT HD) is miles better than that was.
Is it portable? No not yet because it requires electricity but I’m hoping maybe some power bank solution will be possible.
This specific phone was the first phone I ever used, in the eighties, so the nostalgia factor is huge. This is way more out of nostalgia and like coolness points than any actual practical benefits. Although whenever I try too hard to do hipstery or boomery things it’s much more likely that people will just think I’m a dork. But doing things that I think is cool is worth it even if no-one else does. It’s building a life that sparks joy.
Are there even any practical benefits? That’s a stretch but… It can remind me to do more things over the phone than over email? It’s like a more inviting way to use the phone? A habit shaping device? It’s much worse than the cellphone in one regard: I love pacing at home or doing chores or errands while on the cellphone while this one ties me to sitting in my rocking chair. The handset wire is really short. Yeah, it’s easy for me to use either or: talking through the cellphone normally still works, but this still invites me to not walk around as much when talking and that’s bad because of less exercise.
Also phone, any phone, is much worse than meeting up. And the best use of tech is to schedule meeting up. So if this makes be replace real life meetups with phone, that’s bad, but if it helps replace email with phone, that’s good. I guess I could hook it up to Jitsi or Signal instead of the phone net. That would require re-pairing since this model can only pair to one device at a time. (They had another model that could pair to four, but it didn’t have BT HD audio.) But even though it’s not an easy changeover I’m glad I have more than one use for this thing if I change my mind what I want to use it for.
The rotary dial works, I can dial numbers and it calls them, or I can just dial from the cellphone’s address book, that also works. There’s a feature where with a hook flash you can get Siri (or whatever Android’s Siri is called) on the line for voice dialing or scheduling appointments and stuff but, not me because my cellphone doesn’t have anything like that! 🤦🏻♀️
Most of all this serves as a reaffirmation for me that I hate smartphone. Ludditism as an art form. It wasn’t enough to get a crappy overpriced hipster cellphone (Light, fix the bugs and you’ll get a good review from me. I like the design. I just don’t like the bugs), I had to LARP as a landline user at home. And it is a LARP because it only builds on top of cellphone tech, it doesn’t take anything away so it’s not really ludditism or minimalism. Just another gadget. 😔
But sometimes a LARP is the only way to live the dream.