By Brett Molina
Here’s one way to put down that smartphone: grab yourself a substitute.
An Austrian designer created a “substitute phone,” which looks like a smartphone, but features stone beads on a track to resemble gestures like swiping or tapping.
The designer, Klemens Schillinger, created the “substitute phone” based on his observations of people constantly scrolling and reading on their smartphones.
“The shape of the Substitute Phone replicates an average smartphone, however, its functions are reduced to the movements we make hundreds of times on a daily basis,” reads a description on his website.
The “phone” offers no digital features. Instead, uses just swipe the stone beads back and forth to simulate gestures you would make on a regular smartphone.
“This calming limitation offers help for smartphone addicts to cope with withdrawal symptoms,” according to the website.
In an email to USA TODAY, Schillinger said he plans to make them available for purchase in the near future.
While the smartphone has become the most important gadget in our lives, there have been concerns whether we spend too much time scrolling on our devices.
Last year, American consumers spent an average of five hours a day on their smartphones, nearly double the amount of time from 2013, says Flurry Analytics, a research firm specializing in analyzing mobile usage.
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