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Envelope Phone Cases - Simplify Your Smartphone

Posted: January 29, 2020
Envelope Phone Cases - Simplify Your Smartphone

Created as concepts for the Google Digital Wellbeing Experiments platform, Envelope cases are simple paper slip-ons for smartphones that transform them into simpler devices. The Envelope above regresses a Google Pixel 3a into a flip phone, blocking access to all functions but making and receiving calls. Envelope creators, Special Projects, also developed an Envelope that isolates a smartphone's most basic photo and video camera functions, blocking out the screen, so you can focus on the IRL shot that's in front of you.

Special Projects' Envelopes took inspiration from minimalist phones Punkt MP02 and the Lightphone (both $250+, by the way), as well as companies like Distractagone and Yondr, which make lockable cases that store phones, their distractions, and their recording abilities during meetings, concerts, and therapist-recommended attempts to have a conversation with your significant other during dinner rather than checking emails and reading Reddit.

Envelopes' ability to reduce a phone's functionality comes from an app that takes over the device, and allows it to perform only the Envelope-designated function.

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