When was the last time you gave out your home phone number? A week ? A month? A year? These days most of us live and die with our cellphones but the Icono home phone by designer Zinc Chan could change all that as we draw, rather than dial the people we want to call. You’ll be given out your home number just as an excuse to use it.
With its imitation stellar-star interface and futuristic design, the Icono looks like a poster gadget for ‘futuristic retro’ design. Rather than a handset, the Icono comes with two separate and yet connected ear and mouth pieces for you to talk and listen from. When using the Icono handset, it looks like you are making the internationally recognised hand signal for ‘call me’.
Using the Icono touch screen interface, the user simply draws the shape associated with the person they wish to call and the phone dials them. Pretty cool unless you have the drawing skills of a 5-year old. Each shape is numerically assigned to a number so the phone can recognise your intended call.
Zinc Chan’s Icono is, as yet, just pie in the sky concept design and with the unstoppable wave upon wave of cell phone releases, the home phone could soon be a thing of the past. That is unless, ofcourse, they jump on the Apple bandwagaon like everybody else (OpenFrame
, i’m talking to you).