Even as the smartphone market trends toward large touchscreens with 12-Megapixel cameras, a celebrity-driven movement is afoot to revive the simple flip phone of the early 2000s.

A number of celebrities have been spotted in recent months sporting phones with the simple clamshell design, including trendsetter Anna Wintour, influential editor-in-chief of American Vogue.

Wintour was photographed checking her flip phone at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York back in September.

The image quickly touched off a wave of excitement online, with many users glad to see their obsolete phones had come back into fashion.

Meanwhile, Rihanna, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Beckinsale have also been spotted using flip phones.

The flip phone has been making a comeback, as has its 'ancient' cousin, the original Binataone Brick mobile phone from the early 1980s. There's a booming market for the Brick on eBay, where auctioneers routinely ask for north of $50 for the telecommunications relic.

Flip phones are also popular on eBay, with some models like the Nokia 8800 going for more than $150. Other models like the once-ubiquitous Motorola RAZR go for about $50 each.

The retro flip phone trend flies in the face of the current smartphone business, where many companies are producing “phablets” with larger screens and more processing power for mobile applications.

For instance, Apple's iPhone 6 was designed to be about 15 millimetres taller and nine millimetres wider than the previous version, the iPhone 5S. And for users who wanted to go bigger, Apple designed its iPhone 6 Plus to offer the same features as the iPhone 6, with a significantly larger screen.

The Samsung Galaxy S series has also grown in size with every new generation.

But for some – including a few celebrities - the simplicity of a flip phone is far more appealing.