If you think you’ve seen it all, then here’s a
new one for the weekend. Google has put up
an experimental project to make your smart-
phone calmer. Yeah, you’ve read right!

The project promises to make you concentrate on other things instead of your smartphone.

The solution behind all this? A paper-shape to fit together and an app… from Google! Naturally!

With the paper envelope the phone is reduced to the basic functions and tries to make you use your smartphone less.

The project is aimed to work best together with Google’s own Pixel 3a (naturally!).

The app allows two modes: Either use basic function of phone calls and clock or use it to make pictures… but without the screen as a viewfinder. And this can be a challenge!

Oh… Google itself says that you even should seal the envelope with glue. Yeah… I want Glue all over my new device. Makes it look… better(?), grungier(?), shinier(?), hippster-like? We don’t know at all…

And in case you remove the envelope, the app tells you how long you have had your phone in “dumbphone” mode. However we ask ourselves how the phone is detecting the envelope being removed…

Anyway… what about the simple idea to put it in Flight mode? Then there are no annoying messages, the phone can be basically used for everything but without apps that need to be online. Oh… and of course phone calls don’t work. But as Envelope stands for, the phone should get calmer! And blocked calls due to no network is also a way to make the phone calmer.

All in all this project is sort of stupid. Why all that effort to build an app and the Google-Phone-tailored paper shape just to teach people to use their phone less…?

There’s a video from the project and explaining it all…

No matter from which point of view we see the project, we simply cannot see any practical use of it which could not also achieved by simply turning the phone into Flight Mode and thus reducing it’s activity.

For this we award this project the “What the hell?”-Award:

“Things the world just doesn’t need!”

awarded to “Project Envelope” Jan 2020