A Phone With Four Faces. Swap the Keypad, Change What It Does.

Canadian start-up Side Technologies is selling a phone whose interface comes off in your hand. The Sidephone ships with a T9 numeric keypad, and three alternates you buy separately: a QWERTY pad, a click wheel they call the Sundial, and a game controller. Core77 covered it this week.

The modules are held on by clips and magnets, so a swap takes a second and no tools. The phone runs $300, each extra face is $30, and it only works on T-Mobile. No social apps come preinstalled, and there are none in the company's store to install either. A browser exists if you go looking for it, alongside maps, calendar, WhatsApp, Signal, podcasts and a voice recorder. The 2.8-inch touchscreen never changes. What changes is the thing your thumb actually rests on.

Most attempts at a quieter phone work by deleting software until the temptation is gone. This one relocates the decision into a part you can hold, which means you commit to a mode by physically installing it. Put the Sundial on and you have chosen music for the afternoon, and choosing something else means finding the other keypad and clicking it into place. What happens to a habit when changing it costs a deliberate gesture instead of a tap?