About Us

It was an old iPhone 5, long discontinued. Its black frame was worn down, the Home button barely responsive. But to Cheng, its value was never about functionality.

Ten years ago, when he was still a college student, he received the phone as a gift—from her. She was everything to him back then.

They studied at different universities, separated by cities, held together only by a fragile thread of connection. That phone became their lifeline over seven long years. They talked through countless late-night calls, sometimes until dawn. They exchanged thousands of text messages—every “I miss you” typed out with trembling fingers. They argued, cried, made up again. Every spark of joy or moment of heartbreak was mirrored on that small screen.

But in the end, they didn’t make it.

She got married. The wedding photos flooded his social feed like silent knives, each cut deeper than the last. Cheng didn’t go. He didn’t unfollow her either. He simply turned off notifications from her, slipped the phone into a drawer, and never touched it again.

Until one day, while cleaning out old belongings, he stumbled upon it. In that instant, memories flooded back. As he tried to charge it, his hand slipped. The phone fell from the balcony—and shattered.

He sat on the staircase, stunned. It felt like losing her all over again.

Unwilling to let go, he decided to preserve the phone. He disassembled it, cleaned each part carefully, and mounted them onto a wooden frame. Not to display it, but to honor it. Beside the fragments, he wrote a single line:

“You’re no longer here, but you once were.”

One day, on a whim, he posted a photo of the framed phone online. He didn’t expect much—just a quiet tribute. But unexpectedly, it resonated with many.

“I still have my dad’s phone—the last thing he used to talk to me.”

“I keep her old phone in my drawer. I just… can’t throw it away.”

“I want to preserve mine too.”

In that moment, Cheng realized he wasn’t alone. Others, too, clung not to gadgets, but to memories left behind.

So, he started a small brand: Retechart —a blend of “Retrospect” and “Tech.” He began offering framed dissections of people’s old phones, each one a tribute to a story, a person, a love once held.

Today, Cheng still keeps that shattered iPhone 5 on the wall of his workshop. It hangs like a lantern—shedding light on memories, on loss, and on love that never truly leaves.