Call Me: Double-Oh-7280

Look what the cat dragged in. It's so beautiful, I could cry. A phone, a mere phone, I know (and camera and lipstick mirror and....), but it's the most magnificent phone I've ever seen.

If you loved me you'd help me feel ten-times more like an international espionage agent than I already do by buying me this little trinket. I stumbled across the Nokia 7280 while researching a fashion gadget piece and bemoaning the demise of Siemens Xelibri line (One phone looked like a compact, another like a pendant on a necklace. Cool!). Thank the powers that be that design innovation—as it so often does in the world of consumer tech—didn't end with snappy shell colors but went deep enough to hurt. The interface, the shape, the display, all move the mobile forward, or sideways...with an elegant lurch.

There is something to be said about everyday objects deserving great design. I'm grateful to Target for setting Michael Graves on toilet brushes, for example. There is something else to be said about the secret ingredient in design, the X-factor that ignites desire turning something as utilitarian as a handbag into a gravitational force. I don't understand it, but I experience it, and I love it the way I love a good healthy crush. Yum.

Until I can shoehorn my bits into a black catsuit, I can at least call you up on my 7280 and whisper about it.

http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/7280

Aside: I do have to say that the Nokia 7280 theme song does make me want to kill someone. And not in some kind of sexy James Bond way, in more of a thuggish, unglamorous way...with something blunt.