Nokia, Schmokia: meet low-tech Pokia

LONDON (Reuters) - When he walks down the street trying out his nifty invention, Nicholas Roope looks just a little bit crazy.


He is, after all, talking into a heavy, black, old, Bakelite telephone handset, with a thick coiled cord leading into his pocket.


Heads turn. The faces of passers-by register surprise, disbelief, and then, almost immediately, signs of recognition as if Roope's object were the most familiar thing in the world.


It is, essentially, an old phone handset wired up to a standard mobile phone concealed in the pocket. It may or may not become the de rigueur fashion accessory of the decade. It may or may not ever make Nicholas Roope any money.


But it has landed him on the covers of an Italian style magazine and the Home section of the New York Times, and into the pages of technology, fashion and finance sections of magazines and newspapers in Britain and Sweden.


Not bad for a gizmo he makes on the coffee table in his London apartment and sells on Ebay. He calls it the Pokia.


And when he starts to explain that he has tapped into something important about modern life and modern style, you can't help feeling like he may be on to something.


"The idea is really simple, but the reaction is always really strong," he says.


Look at your own mobile phone. It's probably small, silver or black, and vaguely futuristic. You probably don't care about it very much.


SIMPLE, ROBUST


Roope holds up a classic army-green BT home telephone receiver, probably from the 1960s or 1970s. It is a heavy-duty functional object which Roope says was styled by legendary American designer Charles Eames.


"We've had mobile phones for maybe 10 years. They get smaller and smaller and smaller, and more and more powerful. But with that, the design takes a back seat," says Roope. "The very simple, robust, focused, single-minded design loses its way."


One of Roope's latest -- an old BT signal checker's handset which comes in a grey metal box -- has been bought on Ebay by a Hollywood producer to install in his limousine. Another, the Hotline, is bright red and looks like it would be perfect for dialing the Kremlin or launching a nuclear strike.


Roope has made Pokias from old-fashioned brass candlestick-style phones, and squarish 1980s plastic office phones. But it seems to be the heavy-duty receivers of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that look the most natural.


Though he has been told he would be unlikely to win a patent for wiring a vintage receiver to a mobile phone, he thinks he can turn it into a design-driven business.


With technology making it cheaper and easier to make handsets, he expects one day you will buy them at a high street fashion shop alongside sunglasses or handbags, rather than at a mobile phone shop. You can buy them to suit different outfits.


In the meantime, for those willing to plonk for a Pokia on Ebay, it's a great way to meet dates.


"When you take it out in social situations, the first thing that happens is people say: 'Does it work?' And then inevitably you say: 'Phone me on it.' Then you have their number."