Sweet Phone for an iPhone

I’d love to have one of these items sitting around the house. This is from Etsy and I’d buy it, except that it costs $195. That is a handsome price for the luxury of necking with an old-school cradle. Is it worth it?

My moms had an actual rotary phone in her house up until last year. Using it was really satisfying. The rotary dial was slow, each number required patience as the wheel clicked back around to home from where ever you released it. The handset was really heavy and felt solid against my ear. The sound was warm and full. It is so different from the experience of using a cell phone or using the lightweight plastic wireless home phones.

I often wonder why people talk into their cell phones like they are sliding fresh oysters into their mouths. You know the style: where they hold the phone to their mouth like they are talking into a walkie talkie, and when they are done talking they put it up to their ear like a regular phone? Is it because they do not trust that the person on the other end is going to hear them unless they put the phone microphone right up to their mouth? I’ve read that people use their cell phones this way because to keep from inadvertently hanging up on people (think: really thick hair or earrings?). I think it is simply because cell phones, for all their micro-portability and conveniently light weight frames, are just too small for an honest, ergonomically fulfilling talking experience.

Maybe liking an old-style cradle and handset like this is simply nostalgia. When the day comes that it is common for our cell phone technology to be woven into our jackets or other clothing, and we have no physical object to interface with when talking on them (i.e., we are just talking into thin air, sans visible ear piece or mouthpiece, will we still miss the heavy rotary phone and cradle? Or will we then long for the nostalgic “heft” of an old iPhone4?)