NoPhone has sold more than 4,000 units, according to Gould, who also happens to be an art director for a New York ad agency. For whatever reason, Gould received a bulk order from Reunion Island, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. "I didn't even know this place existed," he told me. The NoPhone began in 2014 as a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $18,000 -- about the same time a now-famous potato salad recipe eventually pulled in more than $55,000. Coincidence? Sunspots? Or was it just the right time to appeal to a nation's oddball sense of humor? Whatever the reason, the NoPhone touched on a basic truth: We can't seem to take our eyes off our phones. Go to any restaurant, and you'll see families with mom, dad and the kids all looking at their phones. Heck, I've even asked a surgeon if I could check my emails while he was operating on my arm. (He said I couldn't.)
For a product that does so little, it actually accomplishes a lot by reminding us to give our phones a rest. Gould said he swaps out his real smartphone for the NoPhone once a week during date nights with his girlfriend. Now I'm thinking I should do something similar. Not that my marriage is in trouble, as far as I know. (My wife wasn't immediately available to comment.) It's just that I have a hard time keeping phones and tablets away from our bed. Maybe the NoPhone will keep my wife from snapping at me after my umpteenth email check in the middle of the night.
Others may want the NoPhone just because it's so absurd. And people do seem to want it. After getting off work, Gould spends his nights packing and shipping the plastic rectangles from his 400-square-foot apartment on New York's Upper West Side.
"I'm not sure if we'll be the next Apple, but who knows?" Gould said. "We're the biggest fake-phone company in the world."
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