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This Minimalist Phone Brings You Back to the Real World

One day, back when I was in junior high, my Dad came home and told me about an amazing computer he'd seen at a friend's house. It was a state of the art machine, built by hand to be the fastest and the best thing available. And, my dad said, it had a massive hard drive.

"It has a 256 meg hard drive!," my dad exclaimed. I was astounded. I didn't think such a thing was possible.

Today, I carry a phone with 128 gigabytes in my pocket. Technology has come a long way. We are connected to the world 24 hours a day via a device more powerful than any computer I could have imagined as a child.

But something has been lost with all of those advances. Go to any restaurant, and you're likely to see people huddled around a table, gazing down into their smartphone screens instead of, you know, talking to each other. A lot of us spend more time with our phones than we do with other humans, and that's kinda sad.

Luckily, there are those who want to get back to basics. The minimalist tech company Punkt has created a new phone that is as barebones as it gets. The MP01 looks like a well-designed relic from the past, and for good reason. There is no internet connection here. There are no games.

The MP01 can make calls, handle text messages, update your calendar and serve as an alarm clock. But that's it. There are no other bells and whistles. It's designed to get you off of your phone and back into the real world, and from the looks of it, it will handle that task quite well.

The MP01 isn't available yet, but you can sign up for Punkt's email list and be among the first to know when it's officially released.

What do you think?