We meet the co-founder of the virtual Mobile Phone Museum to discuss the rich history and design diversity of these portable devices. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is Monocle on Design Extra.
It's a short show to accompany our weekly program where we discuss everything from architecture and craft to furniture and fashion.
I'm Ailey Evans.
The mobile phone, an object that many of us carry around daily and depend on to stay connected to the world around us.
The technology and hardware associated with these portable devices has dramatically changed over time and it is this important history that the Mobile Phone Museum has been archiving and preserving.
Growing a collection of mobile technology heritage to share with the public.
Journalist Sebastian Stevenson caught up with one of the museum's founders to find out more.
Take the phone out that you are listening to this report on and put it in front of you.
If you are listening on something else, I know that phone is nearby.
Ignore the notifications that have just come rushing in and just look at your phone.
Actually look at it.
It probably has a large touchscreen with one or no buttons and one camera.
Turn it around on its back and it probably has at least one to three camera lenses.
How did our phones come to look like this?
The Mobile Phone Museum, set up by Ben Wood and Matt Chatterley in 2021, is an online archive.
Along with the occasional pop up exhibition, the collection of mobile phone hardware shows us how we got to this point and the paths that we went down along the way.
The charity also goes to schools and shows the next generation what is possible for this device.
The business of living involves communicating, which often means conversing and in today's active mobile world, conversing.
Benwood talks through some of the devices in the collection.
We start by looking at the very first mobile phones available to the market, which weren't very mobile at all.