US engineer makes mobile phone with rotary dial and e-ink screen

An American engineer has created a mobile phone with a dial and a screen made of electronic ink. She has been using the phone she made as her primary phone for a few days now.

The phone is based on an ATMega2560V, which engineer Justine Haupt was able to program in an Arduino IDE, the project page shows. An Adafruit FONA 3G Cellular Breakout contains the hardware to connect to cellular networks. The case is a 3d print, while the antenna on the housing is a real antenna for increasing the range.

The intent was to build a device with buttons and switches to better control the technology, Haupt said in an interview with Wired. For example, the telephone has a switch to turn the device on or off and function buttons to, for example, call specific people.

For notifications, the device has a curved screen of electronic ink. For example, a missed call appears on it. She has also put her own data on it so that people can contact her if she loses the phone and other people find it.

By day, Haupt is a technician making equipment for astronomy at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and is working on his own robot development company. The phone is a side project. She has been using it as her primary phone since this week.