John’s Phone review

John’s Phone is no ordinary phone. It’s a pared down ultra-simple mobile which the manufacturer claims is ‘The world’s most simple phone’. It’s meant to act as a backup for your expensive smartphone.

The phone looks and feels like an old-fashioned remote control. You dial numbers with the keypad and use the large green and red buttons to make and end calls. There’s a volume rocker on the side and switches to lock the keypad and turn the ringer on and off. The small display on the top shows the number you’ve just dialled and the incoming caller’s number, and you can add speed dial contacts to the number keys.

There’s no digital address book, so you’ll have to memorise your contacts’ numbers to know who’s calling. To help you out there’s a paper address book hidden behind a flap on the rear, and a pen slots into the side of the phone.

It’s all impeccably well designed and incredibly cute. We tried to use it as an everyday phone, but this is impossible; we’re too used to relying on caller ID, and not being able to send and receive text messages is very limiting. We can see the merits of having it as a backup phone, but it is expensive; you can buy a fully-featured Sony Ericsson handset SIM-free for the same price, or just spend £25 on a Nokia 1616.

But this isn’t really the point of John’s Phone. It’s not a serious backup; more a beautifully-designed fashion accessory for the accident-prone man about town.