Joe Hollier, a 25-year-old former skater turned technology entrepreneur, describes the moment of transcendental calm when he gave up his smartphone. Mr Hollier had started “going light”, leaving behind his high tech pocket companion and disconnecting from a world defined by ready access to the internet.
It was not easy, he admits. “There is an initial anxiety,” he says. “It’s quite intense. You start tapping your pocket and fidgeting. But then there is this feeling of huge relief.”
New York-based Mr Hollier and his co-founder Kaiwei Tang used the experience as the basis for a subversive mobile phone being launched this summer: revolutionary not for all the advanced features but for the lack of any at all.