What you have in your pocket isn’t for making phone calls or making wry statements about X-Factor on Twitter: no, it’s a tool for proving just how excellently cool you are. With a bit of tweaking and a couple of imported accessories, you can ensure your handset looks suitably vintage for a night out in Shoreditch or a quick rummage through a charity shop. Herefollow our top ten “ironically” (obviously not ironic at all) retro mobile phone accessories.
Decal it up
Ah, the humble decal. This simple piece of sticky-backed plastic can transform your generic iDevice into a slightly less generic iconic ‘80s tech referencing handset. From the home-made Leica M9 decal to the Hoxton-approved casette tape makeover, the decal works best when based on something old, cool and rectangular. This how-to shows you how to create your own.
New phone, old case
This BlackBerry case takes your lovely modern BlackBerry Bold 9700 and makes it look like it came from a business man’s car in the late ’80s.
Build a TV enclosure
We all like having access to iPlayer and watching video on our handsets, but it’s not very hipster even if we’re watching He-Man to be ironic or whatever. Problem solved – looks like you can make this particular model from Post-Its. Nice.
Dock your new phone in an old phone
Or something like that anyway – with iRetrophone you can have all the vintage look of the a Bakelite desk phone with all the functionality of an iPhone. Shame about the name though, huh?
Keep your phone in a mixtape case
Because there’s nothing cooler than a mixtape. Nothing.
Granny speakers
This Gramophone-inspired speaker is perfect for increasing the volume of your iPhone’s music without requiring any additional battery life, with the added bonus that you can pretend you’re listening to aged-vinyl you bought in a charity shop six years ago before vinyl was cool again, when actually it’s a track you downloaded from iTunes this morning.
Get a phone charm
Because it’s about time that these were considered tacky and lame enough to be cool.
Play ironic retro games
You can keep your new fangled birds with anger management issues and the like. I won’t play anything made after 1992 – Ecco the Dolphin, Chuckie Egg, PacMan… who needs a third dimension anyway?
Retro snaps
There are all manner of apps to make your camera phone’s images look like they were taken in the summer of love. Our current favourites are Hipstamatic (iPhone), Instagram (iPhone), Retro Camera (Android) and IncrediBooth (iPhone 4).
Buy an actual vintage phone
Forget all this and head over to Lekki.fr where you can pick up a reissued, made-over Motorola StarTAC with snazzy yellow panels. It kind of reminds us of a single-gear bike with its bright highlights and limited functionality. They’ll love it down at Hoxton Square.
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