Here is a rather spartan phone which I find surprisingly interesting. Especially in the display area, where you would expect to find writings, photographs or emoticons of all kinds.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the telephone Spare One. It is a concept designed by NextOfKin Creatives, a design consultancy based in Singapore, for the client XPAL Power, Inc. For those unfamiliar with the client, quick done: he is the owner of the Energizer brand.
The company's goal, a bit of necessity and a bit of marketing, was to design a "fully functional emergency telephone powered by a single AA battery with a lifespan of 15 years."
Apart from the display, Spare One he is in good shape
The product has no LCD display, and this goes a long way in the overall economy of the item. To combine business with pleasure, however, instead of the display there is a window that shows in its magnificence the "hero" of this device: the classic long-life AA battery of the Californian company.
We have designed an intuitive layout with the emergency button (for SOS calls) in the center of the phone interface. The other essential features we streamlined are a slim form factor, tactile design for buttons, programmable memory for phone numbers, and universal LED flashlight.
Taken from the presentation of the product
Do you know what I tell you? I like it
Simple and essential, even the "window" display solution isn't bad, once you get used to it. The positioning of the battery is such that you can see its expiry date at a glance. As far as ergonomics are concerned, this is an emergency phone.
I imagine it always present in the dashboard of a car, if everything were to go wrong: it's not useful for having an hour's conversation with friends, nor for showing or receiving photos (otherwise they would have put the display there), so even that sort of " bulge” on the back is acceptable. A service mobile phone, in the era in which they also make coffee, to do the things you need and always be there when needed.
I have no idea how to make it work without activating a special SIM, but perhaps in the future such phones will be "given away" as a compendium of the "big" ones, and will allow you to use the same contract as the "main" phone.
