Google's newest phone is literally just a ‘Piece of paper’

Google has introduced its newest product "Paper Phone" which is just a piece of paper, printed with a few pieces of information at home and folded into a rectangle.

With a few snips of scissors, it can hold a credit card. The phone can't take a selfie and doesn't even make calls, reports NDTV.

The Paper Phone project is one of Google's open-source experiments that also includes a phone wallpaper that counts how many times a day a user unlocks their device, and a "desert island" program that gives users access only to their most essential apps for 24 hours.

Paper Phone isn't Google's first attempt at using paper products to explore the digital world. In 2014, the company introduced Google Cardboard, a way to view virtual reality applications on a smartphone. Google said it shipped 5 million pairs of the low-tech glasses in 19 months.

It is part of a new package of "digital well-being experiments" that the company says is aimed at giving users a "digital detox." It arrived the same week Google launched its latest phone: the $800 Pixel 4, which has built-in radar technology that can be controlled by a user's hand motions.

Wellness advocates suggest putting your phone in the other room while you sleep. There's a movement toward "No-Tech Sundays," when participants abandon their tech for the day. Resorts, start-ups and wellness gurus are cashing in on the unplugged travel trend with a variety of digital detox events.

"We hope these experiments inspire developers and designers to keep digital well-being top of mind when building technology," Google Creative Lab team lead Emma Turpin wrote in a blog post.

Some of the movement to unplug stems from research around the effects of tech on our health. The World Health Organization released new screen time guidelines for parents earlier this year based on research that found behavioral and developmental issues in children who spent hours in front of a screen. Other research has found connections between smartphone usage and anxiety.

Tanya Goodin, a London-based digital well-being evangelist, said that Google's project reminds her of when Big Tobacco targeted consumers concerned about their health with low-tar cigarettes to keep them as customers.

"Instead of children's games, they have to look seriously at the fact that we've been rats in this big Silicon Valley experiment. The fact that we can't disengage from technology is exactly because of the things these companies have been doing for years," said Goodin.

Zuckerberg said at a company event that he has told his team to optimize meaningful interactions between users on the platform, rather than maximizing spending time on it, according to a tweet from Flipboard editor Ken Yeung.

Anthony Ramirez, a cyber-navigator at the Chicago Public Library, tweeted his approval of Google's most recent foray into the two-dimensional world.

"I'm all about minimalism and this is fantastic and feels like an art project in just the right way," he said.