NoPhone is a dummy phone that stops you being unsociable

For a lot of groups these days, the norm of ‘socialising’ actually involves sitting around a table staring at their phones without saying very much. But what if you could have a device that gives you the comfort of holding your phone, but without distracting you from everyone else? That’s what NoPhone is for.

It sounds incredibly bizarre, but NoPhone is a real thing that came to be thanks to Kickstarter. The idea is that the NoPhone is the same size and shape as a smartphone, and so it feels like you actually have the real thing in your pocket or your hand. But it doesn’t actually do anything, so you’re forced to talk with the people you call your friends.

For $12/£8 you can get a NoPhone for yourself. It’s waterproof, shatterproof, and never runs out of battery. For $18/£12 you can get one with a ‘selfie upgrade’, which basically means they stuck a mirror on the back.

It seems like a ridiculous idea, but £2,000 of these things were bought on Kickstarter before Christmas. There really is a market for something that tricks your brain into thinking you have a phone on your person, when in reality it’s just a plastic brick.

If you’re the kind of person who would have funded this on Kickstarter, you can buy yourself a NoPhone, or a NoPhone with selfie upgrade, from the NoPhone online store.