Danglin' it Old School: Handsets on Mobiles

Gareth says: "This apparently is not a joke. According to a piece on Phonedaily, a Japanese Taiwanese phone site (via Akihabara), it looks as though young phone users in Japan are trying to achieve that sexy phone lineman look by attaching landline phone handsets to their cellies and then dangling the sets from their belt loops. The site also shows the handsets being customized with paint, glitter, decals, and the like. Personally, we're waiting for those gigantic first-gen cellphones to make a comeback." Link

Reader comment: Jeffrey says: "Just the other day i came across a website that happens to sell these very items. They can be found at Fred Flare." $20.
Link

Reader comment:Fred says: ThinkGeek also offers cellphone handsets, and in my opinion they have more 'old school charm' than Fred's. Although, my name is Fred too, so I'm torn... And, of course, you can't forget the DIY cellphone handset either.

Reader comment: ReindeR says: "A friend of mine is busy building bluetooth headsets into old telephone handsets. His next project is to build an entire GSM into an old desktop phone from the seventies, much like the Portable Rotary project."

Reader comment: Nicolas Roope says: "I run Hulger (formely Pokia) that boingboing.net helped to get moving with a link last year that resulted in a half pager in the NYT (which in turn spurred me on to manufacture them).

"Things have moved on a lot since and we now have 5 models, two of which are bluetooth. all of them work both with cellphones OR for Voice over IP (the wired ones with the Y*CABLE accessory) "

The JYPHONE copies (the one you linked to) annoyed me no more than any of the other copies until i spotted some blatant rips of our special edition customizations."

Reader comment: Jake von Slatt says: "My version is wireless AND handsfree and is more closely related to the classic lineman's butt-set!"