Cel­lu­lar phones are stu­pid. There’s no deny­ing it! But if any­thing is worse, it’s a poorly-implemented mul­ti­func­tion device. We’ve all seen peo­ple whip them­selves into a frenzy over each new fea­ture trend: cam­eras, music play­ers, and accelerometer-controlled vir­tual beer glasses. These new fea­tures are never as good as the orig­i­nal thing they seek to repli­cate, and they do noth­ing to improve on the phone itself. (I think we can assume, at this point, that engi­neers are not spend­ing any time fix­ing the most irri­tat­ing prob­lem with cell­phones: the hor­ren­dous audio quality.)

But I am not opposed to multi-function devices on prin­ci­ple. In fact, I see one combination—yet unexplored—that has poten­tial to be really big: the calculatorphone.

I’m not talk­ing about replac­ing the $2 four-function cal­cu­la­tor you bought at CVS in 1995. I’m talk­ing about replac­ing a graph­ing fuck­ing cal­cu­la­tor. The real deal. With hard plas­tic but­tons that go click. And a nice dis­play. Had you noticed that dial­ing a cellphone—entering a num­ber fol­lowed by the “talk” operator—is a form of post­fix nota­tion? That’s RPN, bitches! And all those num­ber but­tons? If you put the 7 above the 4 above the 1, you have a calculator!

I still use my HP-48GX cal­cu­la­tor. Yes, it was designed in 1993. And yes, I finally agree that 128K of RAM is a lit­tle on the small side, and the 4 MHz Sat­urn proces­sor is a lit­tle slug­gish, and Xmo­dem isn’t the slick­est way to trans­fer files. But the design is still inge­nious, the size is just right, and the qual­ity of con­struc­tion is first-rate. Per­haps with a phone thrown in, there would finally be an incen­tive to update the design with some new hard­ware. Just think how jeal­ous your iPhone friends would be when you pull out your cal­cu­la­tor­phone! Yes, that but­ton really does say “arc­tan.” Can you hear me now?