Chris Pine No Longer Uses a Flip Phone

The saga of actor Chris Pine and his flip phone seems to have ended. It was a great and triumphant journey and we will miss the energy that Pine had while holding a flip phone in his hand for many, many years.

Fans of the Star Trek actor have long been fascinated by the fact that pine had a flip phone like it was 2003 and would taunt the paparazzi with it. Now, the phone choice made sense if you knew anything about Pine—because he was all about not being on social media, wanting to read more, and genuinely desiring to check out from the hustle and bustle of nonsense that happens while being plugged into the internet.

That seems to have changed. In a new episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast hosted by Josh Horowitz, fans were treated to Horowitz sharing a clip from their interview when he finally asked Pine about his flip phone adventures. Horowitz learned that it all became too much for the actor and he had to go back to having an iPhone. Because, as Pine puts it, being on “analog” means that you miss so much of what’s going on in the world for better or worse.

Pine isn’t exactly known for expressing himself on the social media world stage. In fact, he famously hasn’t had any social media accounts throughout his decades-long career, which is quite an anomaly considering his leading man status. But that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t missing out on important things. He shared that he hasn’t read as many books as he was with his flip phone since leveling up, but that now he’s educated in … other ways.

So what does Chris Pine know about?

As Horowitz pointed out in his tweet, Pine hates himself for this: now he knows everything about Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian’s relationship but he doesn’t know a “fucking thing” about literature. While I do love my smart, studious, and favorite Chris, I think it’s hilarious that he’s so angry about being distracted from reading. We imagine he’s still getting some good book time in.

One of my favorite books I’ve read in recent years I discovered because Chris Pine was talking about it in an interview, and I picked it up and fell in love with it. (I’m talking about All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.) So it is a disservice to us all that he’s now more into what’s going on online and doing less to give us brilliant recommendations (Chris, start a book selection club! It would be big!) but the fact that he seems to be in a moral panic about it is just very much the Chris Pine I’ve come to love.

Pine’s simmering disdain for an always-connected smartphone is just one of the reasons that Chris Pine is my favorite Chris. I adore that he is now so upset about the fact that he had to give up his flip phone because he was too behind on the world, but he remains angry that his phone distracts him. All of this is perfectly in character. We have to get Chris Pine one of those lockboxes that parents use for their teenagers and put his phone in there so he can read his novels (and recommend them) in peace.

(image: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)