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Eventually I cracked and got a relatively ghetto Nokia clamshell. Within three months my T9 were pretty sharp and I’d logged more hours playing cellphone crib than I’d care to admit. When the battery started giving me grief, I picked up a Motorola. It didn’t have crib, so a few months later I swapped it for an LG featuring a (shitty) camera. It was great. Then I splurged to get a first-gen iPhone smuggled into Canada and jailbroken. Then I waited in line on iPhone 3G launch day. (The iPhone’s QWERTY keyboard has since destroyed my ability to text with T9 while blindfolded with ninja-like precision.)

This is progress.

It’s a fairly similar, though more rapid, version of what happened to everyone else in the last 20 years. Phones have changed. A lot. They’ve improved. They’ve shrunk. We’ve cut the cord. We’ve added features. Progress.

So can some explain to me why this is so awesome?

I mean, just look at it. Look at it! The second I saw it I had to have it. But why?

This is essentially a retread of the phone I grew up with, though I don’t recall plastic rotary phones being fetishized at any point in the 80s. In fact, I kind of remember us not being able to get away from them fast enough.

Rotary dials gave way to buttons. Then we had phones shaped like hamburgers and a million other (bizarre) variations on that theme. (In junior high I had a phone shaped like a green pipe from Super Mario Bros.) Then cordless arrived and that kind of ruled. Then cellphones. Then smartphones. Progress.

Why does a product like the iRetrofone even exist? More importantly, why do I want it so badly?

It must be purely aesthetic, because there is absolutely no practical value to this thing. It can be (easily) argued that the classic handset design is much easier to do that look-ma-no-hands-shoulder-to-chin thing while you’re doing the dishes. That’s something. But really that’s a better argument for buying this (also completely fucking awesome) retro Bluetooth handset.

Nostalgia is a strange thing. The real question is do I love the iRetrofone because of its retro plasticy beauty or do I love the iRetrofone because it reminds me of a simpler time, when phones were tethered to walls and they didn’t check your email because, well, there was no email to check?

It’s a possibility I hadn’t considered until I saw the first image of the iRetrofone and realized just how easy it is to get ahold of me these days because of all the progress we’ve made.