Projects

My latest stolen idea

If I had gotten this post up in time, I would still be able to link to the July 8 article in the New York Times about a guy in England who’s come up with the splendid idea of using old telephone handsets in conjunction with modern cell phones, attaching them just as you would attach a hands-free headset. He calls his design Pokia, and lacking mass production and distribution, he sells the one-off prototypes on eBay. The last one went for around $200 this week.

As soon as I saw the article, I knew this was for me. Not because I want to cultivate a street style based on the Home & Garden section, but because I crave a phone that’s actually comfortable to speak on. Most of my phone conversations happen on a tiny little Motorola, even at home. There’s no good way to hold it for any extended period, and my hand cramps up trying. The plastic flexes and creaks audibly under normal use, and its flat design keeps the phone side of my face all sweaty and hot. I’ve tried using a hands-free dealie, and while that’s an improvement, I can’t help but feel a little insane when I speak without either a face or a mouthpiece in front of me. I had to have one of these things, but I wasn’t about to pay $200 for it.

The Times article assured me that the success of Pokia had inspired a legion of imitators, with knockoffs available on eBay and instructions available on the web. An eBay search turned up nothing. Thinking that I would need instructions to construct my own alternative handset, I scoured the web for an hour, but had no luck in finding so much as a wiring diagram.

I’m certainly no genius with electronics, but my limited grasp of audio circuitry made me think that the speaker and microphone in a Bell System handset probably wouldn’t just automatically work if you could plug them into a cell phone. I mean, why should they? You wouldn’t expect the audio standard on a modern battery-powered digital phone to be compatible with the Bell standard developed for line-powered phones decades ago. At least, I wouldn’t.

Undeterred by an almost complete lack of knowledge about what I was doing, I decided to just start working and see how close I could get to success. I had an old telephone receiver (a spare from my BellSouth payphone) lying around, so I had a head start. I also had a hands-free headset that came free with an old cell phone. I’ll spare you the gory details, but the bottom line is that it works, and it’s great. I think it delivers better audio to both parties in the conversation, and just like a landline phone, it lets you hear your own voice through the earpiece. I find that this diminishes my tendency toward “cell yell.”

Besides, let’s face it: for all the messing around done with telephone design over the last 20 years or so, has it ever improved? Is there a handset more comfortable and pleasant to use than the good old Western Electric style? I don’t think so.

In case you came to this page in hopes of finding instructions on how to put this together, here’s the secret: There are four wires in your old handset. There are four wires inside the cord of the hands-free headset. Figure it out. If you can’t, I will personally build it for you, provided you pay me dearly for it.