Woman With A Transparent Phone Blows Up The Internet In A Viral Video
A pair or TikTok videos have gone viral for appearing to show a translucent smartphone, like something out of a futuristic science fiction flick. The first video, which shows a woman standing in line while appearing to scroll on a see-through smartphone, has racked up 41.6 million views, 2.8 million hearts/likes, and over 13,800 comments at the time of this writing.
It's a short video that only lasts a handful of seconds, though it's long enough to capture the intrigue of the internet at large. In the clip, a woman can be seen flicking her thumb in the same doom-scrolling motion that a person would perform on an actual smartphone. As the camera zooms in, it becomes *ahem* clear that she's holding a translucent object—there's no UI, no icons or widgets, or anything of note. It's completely translucent.
A theme that took hold in the comments is that it's a new Nokia handset. Most of the replies suggesting as much were tongue-in-cheek, such as one user saying it's the "Nokia Plex," while another claimed its a "€35,000 Nokia Clear Phone." Which, in case you're curious, converts to around $39,070 in U.S. currency.
Here's the video...
Is it real, though? After all, it's been several years since LG first showed off its see-through OLED display technology, and just a few months ago, LG began accepting preorders for a see-through wireless 4K OLED TV.@askcatgpt Completely clear phone spotted in San Francisco on May 14…?!? Wtf?????? 🤭🤫 Link in bio for more deets. (NOT SPONSORED)
♬ original sound - CatGPT
Going back even further, Samsung showcased transparent, flexible AMOLED displays in December 2010. It's not inconceivable that see-through displays could eventually be offered in a handheld form factor, though today is not that day.
A couple of videos later, @askcatgpt let the cat out of the bag explaining the translucent slab is a methaphone, or a slab of acrylic that's been cut in the shape of an Apple iPhone.
@askcatgpt I’m sending out a batch of methaphones to people who have ideas for (safe) social experiments they’d like to run with them— break it out on the subway? Show it to a 5 year old? Replace your phone for a week? The only catch is that you have to write or document your experience in a post online (e.g. blog post, medium, substack, YouTube, tikTok, Ig, etc) The goal is to keep the conversation going. If you’re interested, fill out the super short survey at the link in my bio! Let’s keep the conversation going! #tech #methaphone ♬ original sound - Noah Kahan
In the video, the woman explains that her friend invented the methaphone (we found a closed Indiegogo listing for such a thing) and wanted to test if replacing a real phone with something that feels the same (in the pocket and in the hand) could be useful in curbing smartphone addiction.
"Honesty, have I used my phone less in the past week that I've been carrying this around with me? Probably not. But just the idea that I could have something in my life, something I can touch and hold. And the conversation that this little guy is sparking online. That's what really matters," @askcatgpt explains.
Or, you know, racking up tens of millions of views on a social media platform—we'd venture a guess that going viral also mattered to the creator.
