Mugger To Victim With Flip Phone: ‘What The F*** Is This?'

There's no reason to be embarrassed if you own a flip phone. Especially if doing so means your phone won't be stolen.

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, the New York Post reported.

“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 paper. He described the phone in question as "like a 3-year-old generation Windows phone."

Thieves have rejected all sorts of less desirable cell phones. Last year, a thief held up two Columbia University students, making them hand over their cell phones, only to reject both offerings when he saw they were BlackBerrys. "I want iPhones," he reportedly said.

Around 40 percent of robberies in big American cities involve cell phones, the Federal Communications Commission reported. Many thieves in the U.S. and abroad specifically go after iPhones to resell them. Stealing and reselling cell phones is a $30 billion underground business, and Apple's phones are "by far" the most sought-after cell phones for thieves in New York, city police spokesperson Paul Browne told The Huffington Post earlier this year.

Bill de Blasio, mayor-elect of New York, said he will press smartphone makers to create "kill switches" that would make phones unusable after they're stolen.