Concept → Reality · Rewritten

Mimeo: when the phone wanted to be a pen

In 2009, a text message meant picking letters out on a keypad. One designer’s answer was to turn the phone into a pen and let you write the message instead.

The Design Blog editors

A Samsung Galaxy Note II with its S Pen stylus

A Galaxy Note II and its S Pen: handwriting reached phones, on the screen rather than with the phone itself. AI-retouched from an image by Beamish4, CC BY 4.0.

Verdict 2026

Still a concept

Mimeo stayed a concept and was never produced. Its central idea, writing instead of typing, reached shops in other forms, through Samsung’s S Pen in 2011 and Apple’s Scribble on Apple Watch in 2016 and iPad in 2020.

Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing SetClosest thing you can buyMoleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing Set7.5Design ratingOval barrel that will not rollCheck priceOur design review ↓

The idea today

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Mimeo’s pen phone never shipped, but these two objects let you write by hand and still end up with notes on your phone.

  • Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing Set

    Moleskine Pen+ Ellipse Smart Writing Set

    A slim smart pen and paper notebook that send your handwriting to an app, where it can be searched and turned into text.

    Our design review

    7.5Design rating
    Form8.2
    Material7.6
    Detail7.2
    Longevity6.6

    The Pen+ Ellipse gets its name from an oval barrel that sits in the hand like a carpenter’s pencil and does not roll off a desk. The Gadgeteer’s reviewer noted a metal body with real heft, a ribbed plastic cap and standard D1 ink refills, so writing stays ordinary. The weak point is everything that wears out: a sealed battery rated for about five hours of writing, a micro USB port, and dependence on Moleskine’s dot-coded paper and app.

    Strongest point
    Oval barrel that will not roll
    Compromise
    Sealed battery, micro USB, proprietary paper
    Check price on Amazon
  • Rocketbook Core Reusable Notebook (Executive)

    Rocketbook Core Reusable Notebook (Executive)

    A reusable notebook you write in with a Pilot FriXion pen, scan with your phone and wipe clean with a damp cloth.

    Our design review

    7.7Design rating
    Form7.9
    Material7.2
    Detail7.4
    Longevity8.0

    The Core looks like an ordinary black spiral notebook, but its pages have a glossy finish and carry a dot grid, a QR code and a row of seven symbols for sending scans to cloud folders. That printed footer is the main visual compromise. Reviewers at iMore found the FriXion ink needs 20 to 30 seconds to dry, so left-handers can smear it. The pen and cloth are standard rather than proprietary, and the pages wipe clean with a little water.

    Strongest point
    Standard FriXion pens, endlessly wipeable pages
    Compromise
    Glossy pages and slow-drying ink
    Check price on Amazon

Product images from the retailer listings, cut out and staged with AI.

  1. 2009Designer Sam James Chu publishes Mimeo, a cellphone concept you hold like a pen to write names, numbers and messages, with a pen button and an OLED touchscreen.
  2. 2011Samsung unveils the Galaxy Note at IFA Berlin, a 5.3-inch phone with the S Pen stylus and handwriting recognition.
  3. 2016Apple previews watchOS 3 with Scribble, which turns words written on the Apple Watch display into text.
  4. 2020iPadOS 14 brings Scribble to any text field on iPad with Apple Pencil and can act on handwritten phone numbers.
  5. 2022The Galaxy S22 Ultra becomes the first Galaxy S phone with a built-in S Pen.

What it was

In October 2009, designer Sam James Chu published Mimeo, a cellphone concept built around one gesture: writing. You held the phone like a pen and wrote the name or number of the person you wanted to reach, then pressed call. To send a text, you wrote the message and pressed a pen button near the lower end of the body. It was pitched at people who text constantly, and coverage at the time pictured it in high-school pockets.

The point was to stop staring at the screen. Chu’s reasoning was that writing a message by hand would be quicker than picking out letters on a keypad, and that it could be done without looking at the phone. A small OLED touchscreen was still there for scrolling and checking what you had written. It was never built beyond the concept stage.

Mimeo was right that people wanted to write. It was wrong about what they would write on.

Where the idea went

The pen-shaped phone never came. Handwriting did, attached to phones rather than replacing them. In 2011, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note at IFA in Berlin, a 5.3-inch phone with a stylus called the S Pen, a Wacom digitizer and handwriting recognition. In 2022 the pen moved into Samsung’s main line, when the Galaxy S22 Ultra became the first Galaxy S phone with a built-in S Pen.

Apple reached a similar place, first with a fingertip and later with its own pen. In June 2016 it previewed Scribble for Apple Watch, which turns letters drawn on the small screen into text for quick replies. In June 2020, iPadOS 14 extended Scribble to any text field on iPad when using Apple Pencil. It could also spot a handwritten phone number and offer to call it, which is close to the gesture Mimeo described in 2009. At launch, Scribble on iPad worked in English and Chinese.

What it means now

Mimeo read the problem well and picked a different object than the industry did. Writing became a way to talk to a device, but it went onto glass, with a stylus or a fingertip, while the phone stayed a flat slab. On most devices handwriting became an option rather than the main way in.

The part of Mimeo that has not found a mainstream product is the blind gesture: writing a name without looking at any screen and having the call go through. The nearest thing on sale today is a pen and notebook that pass what you write on paper to your phone.

The original post, summarized

Our October 2009 post introduced Sam James Chu’s Mimeo, a concept phone you used like a pen to write names, numbers and text messages, with a pen button for sending and an OLED touchscreen for scrolling. It is summarized here rather than republished.

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