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One Way to Thwart a Mugger: Carry a Flip Phone

By Aditi Mukherji, JD on January 01, 2014 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Proof that life is often stranger than fiction, an armed mugger in New York rejected a victim's flip phone -- just like a Bill Hader T-Mobile commercial!

T-Mobile's prophetic powers reveal that no one wants a dumbphone, not even armed robbers:

"What the F--k Is This?"

New York City resident Kevin Cook was mugged at gunpoint in Central Park on Saturday, but when the thief stole Cook's phone, he was so upset to find that it was an old flip phone that he gave it back, according to the New York Post.

"Once he saw my phone, he looked at it like, 'What the f--k is this?' and gave it back to me," Cook told the Post. He described the phone in question as "like a 3-year-old generation Windows phone."

To the dismay of tweens and techies with a penchant for poking, pinning, digging and tweeting, we actually live in a world full of dumbphones. Although smartphones are ubiquitous in many developed markets, there are still plenty (i.e. billions) of people who use dumbphones, reports Wired.

Luddites are often left unscathed by robbers -- not because thieves are avid readers of Wired who like to wax poetic on the next big gadget; they merely have a palate for stolen cell phones with the highest street value (read: iPhones). And NYC is in the top 10 when it comes to cell phone theft.

How Do You Like Them Apples?

Naturally, theft in NYC revolves around Apple products. It is the Big Apple, after all! (Sorry.) But in all seriousness, since 2012, the city has come to grips with a major spike in crime involving Apple products. In fact, one in seven crimes in NYC involve an Apple product getting stolen, according to the New York Police Department. And in 2012, crime reports in the city involving Apple products spiked by 40%.

Fortunately, there are iPhone theft prevention steps New Yorkers can take to thwart would-be iRobbers. Rest assured, none of them involve lugging around a lame dumbphone.

Sorry hipsters, it seems robbers just don't care about your ironic Zack Morris cell phones.

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