The Substitute Phone is designed exclusively for smartphone addicts

In today’s day and age, asking a person to stay away from their smartphone for a few minutes can be a difficult task. We’ve grow used to having a device to fiddle around with when we get bored. We tend to scroll through social media sites or turn on the phone and randomly browse through apps like an involuntary action even when we don’t want to. It’s an addiction that may not be one of the more harmful kinds, but is still an addiction nevertheless. This is what pushed Austrian designer Klemens Schillinger to create the Substitute Phone – a tool made to help smartphone addicts abstain from using their phone.

This novel product is essentially designed looking at our touchscreen habits. I say product because this really isn’t an actual phone, but simply a smartphone-shaped block of high-grade plastic which features a line of stone beads set vertically, horizontally or diagonally. The beads act as ‘substitutes’ for touchscreen and users can roll their fingers on them to mimic daily smartphone actions like scrolling, zooming or swiping. The tool not only gives a sort of placebo effect, but Schillinger says it will provide smartphone addicts a therapeutic way to cope with withdrawal symptoms. “The object, which some of us describe as a prosthesis, is reduced to nothing but the motions,” he explains.

“More and more often one feels the urge to check their phone, even if you are not expecting a specific message or call. These observations inspired the idea of making a tool that would help stop this ‘checking’ behaviour,” he told Dezeen.

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/technology/story/the-substitute-phone-is-designed-exclusively-for-smartphone-addicts/1/1097978.html