Exclusive: SteamPunk phone designer working on iPhone app

The designer of the SteamPunk concept mobile that’s heating up designer blogs has confirmed he’s now working on an iPhone application to match his lunatic phone design.

The ultimate retro handset, the SteamPunk uses punch cards, not SIM cards. There is no screen, just a clockwork display. And it’s powered (sadly not by steam but) by winding a brass key.

Arthur Schmitt, along with fellow RCA students Marek Bereza and Andy Broomfield, designed the SteamPunk concept phone as a project for O2. And while it looks unlikely to go into production, Schmitt now plans to design an iPhone application with the same old skool style.

The O2 project tasked the students with designing a handset for extreme users. They chose roleplayers as their target audience, first quizzing Second Life players about their lifestyles, then paper-based RPGs. They sat, they watched them roll dice, and they asked the gamers what their fantasy mobile phone would look like.

And the geeks came up trumps. It’s the most weird and wonderful handset we’ve ever clapped eyes on. There’s no screen and just one button. Instructions and phone numbers – in binary – are entered via business card-sized punch cards.

The response to the concept phone has surprised Schmitt. “Strangers keep sending me emails, wanting to buy it. But it’s just a piece of wood. We made the speaker from a tea strainer!” he says. “I would like to make a real one, maybe make one-offs for, say, £2,000. It wouldn’t be hard, it’s simple technology.”

Meanwhile Schmitt says he plans to design an iPhone application, perhaps a screensaver, based on the SteamPunk’s clockwork display.

We say thank god the roleplayers were inspired by steampunk and not their dark elf’s +50 Staff of Smiting.

Out TBC | £TBC | Arthur Schmitt

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