Wireless News

KDDI au seems to spend a lot of time on developing concept handsets, but that’s fine by us. Especially when they’re as cool looking as the Ply.

The “Ply” concept model is apparently inspired by plywood in that it has multiple layers for the phone’s different functions. It also has a touchscreen that fills the entire device. These functions are varied and definitely interesting for a phone. Things like a pico-projector, analog clock with a minute hand that swings outside of the body of the phone and a printer are included.

It seems like ages since we’ve had a concept phone on these pages, so lets muster up some congratulations for Ukraine designer Shkinder Maxim who has just won third place in the Tancher Electronic Design competition with his twisty, projector-toting ‘Transformer’ handset. Consisting of three main sections that pivot 360 degrees around a central pivot, Maxim envisages the Transformer as comprising five key functions: cellphone, photo/video recorder, media player, projector and holographic projector/3D scanner. Different modes are activated by positioning the handset into particular shapes; for instance, when working as a projector the cellphone stands upright in a Y-shape.

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Subscribing to the “short and dumpy” school of design, Lysandre Follet’s Motorola concept is notable for its so-called stereo camera which presumably captures 3D images (or particularly wide-aspect panoramas, perhaps). Borrowing the big M’s design language, the handset resembles a Q smartphone crossed with Samsung’s P310, dropping the former’s QWERTY thumbboard in favour of some chunky numerics.

Lysandre also envisions the handset as having WiFi and Bluetooth, and it looks as though it has a dual flash. Of course, there’s no chance of seeing this on the shelves any time soon, which is a shame because Motorola really needs all the help it can get right now.

Another week, another cellphone concept made of ecozeitgeist material of the moment bamboo; Gert-Jan van Breugel’s concept goes one step further, however, not only being made of the grass but containing its seeds as well. That means, once it’s been buried at the end of its lifespan, new bamboo can be grown. The plant in fact feeds off the rest of the casing, which would be made from corn-based bio-plastic.

Power is also environmentally provided, with the whole handset becoming a hand-powered crank to recharge its battery. van Breugel estimates a three-minute cranking session (isn’t that what Lil Jon does?) would be enough for a single phone call. The design is an entry for core77’s Greener Gadgets 2008 competition.

Concept phones are great, but they’re particularly interesting when the designer has obviously put a lot of effort into explaining how all the aspects of it would work. It turns what can often be a flight of fancy into something that really makes you think about the construction and interfaces of the devices we choose to carry. Qian Jiang’s Softphone concept is similar, in a way, to Nokia’s format changing Morph concept from yesterday, but with echoes of those instant pop-up tents and washing baskets: collapsing to a small, clipped fabric ring, the design uses tactile gestures – such as squeezing to answer a call – and interwoven light-emitting threads to create simple menus and controls.

Unclip it, however, and the whole thing springs open and gives room for a full QWERTY keyboard. The earbuds are wireless (with nifty slots to fix them to the phone’s lanyard, whereupon they recharge through inductive power) and all the hardware and electronics are squashed into the clip itself.

Obviously you shouldn’t expect to see the Softphone on shelves anytime soon, but it does prompt questions about convergence devices and the adaptations they require of us (rather than them adapting to how we use them; tiny thumb keyboards are a good example of this).

[via Yanko Design]