Like many other people, Albert Beltran Feliu spent many hours a day looking at the screen of his mobile phone. “He began to become obsessed with the problem,” recalls his childhood friend Carlos Fontclara Bargallo. This obsession, together with the desire of both of them to undertake, led them to create “a mobile phone halfway between the Nokia and a smartphone, with the intention of leaving behind the design of a smartphone created so that we spend as much time as possible using it.” ” explains Beltran.
While they continue working on the development of their phone free of screen addiction, these two 24-year-olds have launched an application that blocks all addictive apps and websites. The Balance Phone application has been available for just a month for Android devices and in all the languages integrated with this operating system. The co-founders are in the process of also being able to offer the program to Apple devices.
The operation of Balance Phone is as easy as it is effective: the solution combats screen addiction by blocking access to social networks, online streaming websites, games, online gambling and pornography. The app can be deleted at any time through a password set at the time of installation. The programmer who has worked the miracle is Joel Ruiz Ruiz, who completes the team of this emerging company.
The first beneficiaries of Balance Phone are its own creators, who say they have gone from spending four hours a day in front of their mobile phone to one hour. The application is specifically aimed at children and adolescents who have their first phone and also for people who seek to set limits on the use of technology for the sake of their health, those who are in the trend of “digital minimalism.”
From the shared work space Norrsken House Barcelona, entrepreneurs aim to unhook as many people as possible from screens. Those who do not have enough with the app will have to wait for the pre-sale of the mobile, scheduled for June, through a crowdfunding campaign with which they hope to raise 300,000 euros. To date, the company has involved an investment of 135,000 euros from the entrepreneurs' savings and what is known as the three efes (from the English "family, friends and crazy"). The co-founders, who founded the company in November 2023, have not yet entered into any business incubation or acceleration program.
