Go ahead and open your screen-time and see what the most-used apps are. Mine, by far, are Instagram and YouTube. Tik-tok’s blocked where I live, so that’s probably the only reason I don’t have it there, but I log in at least 4-5 hours of scrolling and videos every day on my phone. I’m not saying it’s healthy, I don’t even recommend it. But it’s the reality and I’m sure there are a bunch of people just like me who use their phone predominantly for staying connected, and secondarily for productivity.
The “Threads Phone” by NARZ dives headfirst into that logic, offering a phone tailor-made to the social experience. Designed mainly for browsing, it borrows from another device that was tailor-made for browsing – the iPod. As much as the iPod was a music player, it was also insanely good at letting you browse through a massive collection of music. Thousands of songs in your pocket was quite literally Steve Jobs’ pitch, so it was important for the iPod to let you toggle through those songs effectively. NARZ simply took that logic and applied it to all of Social Media.
Designer: NARZ
The phone comes with a screen, but also sports actual controls to let you access and interact with social media posts. A jogwheel enables scrolling, the like and comment buttons are self-explanatory, and a repost button works best within Threads, X, Bluesky, or the Fediverse. There’s also an easy to access Back button so you aren’t reaching for the top of the screen like you would on most phones.
NARZ designed the phone especially for Threads use, which is a fairly non-confrontational way of saying it’s for X users too. Plus, given Threads is literally Instagram’s little sibling, the phone works fairly well with IG’s interface, allowing you to scroll using the jogwheel, while also tap on directions to slide between the different sections of the app, and click the center button to do things like open DMs, etc.
That doesn’t mean the touchscreen doesn’t work. It’s still a touch phone the way Blackberries are touch phones. However, the added benefit of social-ready hardware controls make the phone a breeze to use if you’re a bit of a social media junkie like I am. The concept doesn’t detail out the back of the phone, but it’s safe to assume that there’s a camera on there, making the Threads Phone just like your standard smartphone, just optimized for a certain type of use.
NARZ doesn’t stop there, though. On their Instagram, the designer also describes as the phone working as a Chromecast remote – an odd choice, but given that the jogwheels and buttons are already there, adding a set of features to the existing hardware sounds, well, deliberate. The device is currently in a concept stage, but it does make the case for hardware buttons on phones. Sure, we’ve seen companies go the Blackberry route by reviving QWERTY keyboards on devices (a la Clicks Communicator and Unihertz Titan 2 Elite), but I could see a device like this working too. After all, only a fraction of your time spent online actually involves typing text. The rest is still browsing and non-verbal interactions – so why not do what the iPod did so well? Browse?!
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