Home phone News

Why get a smartphone when you can tweet from your home phone?

Wednesday 2 November, 2011

By Anthony Hill

What happens when analogue and digital collide? You get a rotary phone capable of sending Twitter updates.

Anyone who thinks the days of the humble landline are numbered clearly hasn’t heard of Tweephone.

Created by Ukrainian developers at the UP digital bureau and Unteleported tech agency, the Tweephone is thought to be the world’s first analogue Twitter client - allowing users of the microblogging website to sent their “tweets” using its old-fashioned rotary dial.

Just like writing a text message on a mobile, the Tweephone allows you to write messages by ringing up a digit until you get the next letter you need - dial “5” three times to get an “L” and so on. Then you simply hang up the receiver to send your message.

Since a Twitter update, a tweet, can be anything up to 140 characters long, the Tweephone doesn’t beat computer keyboards on efficiency. But what it lacks in speed, the classic rotary device makes up for with old school charm.

The developers are now using the Tweephone to broadcast messages from their base in Kiev; Twitter users can follow @tweephone, with the bizarre tweets sent so far including “I love my mommy and daddy” and “free your mind and win the pony”.

New findings from telecoms regulator Ofcom suggest UK households spend around five hours a month using their landline. Perhaps this figure will increase if every home has a Tweephone...