Top 10 Concept Phones
Kinneir Dufort's Revive concept phone
We might all agree that there’s plenty of choice when you go out shopping for mobile phones. Nowadays you can get nearly everything that you want in this type of device. You can get a phone with a camera and snap photos of all your favorite moments. You can go on the web, talk to your friends on Facebook, share ideas on Twitter, send and receive e-mails or read e-books. The list of things you can do with a smartphone is definitely not small. Having said that, people like me who’ve seen their fair share of high tech mobile phones can’t help but wonder what’s in store for us in the future?
What else are they going to add to mobile phones to make them more exciting than they already are? The first answer that comes to mind is “make them smaller and slimmer”. After all, we ended up using mobile phones that were pretty brick-like and then all phone makers chose to study their handsets’ design carefully and slim them down as much as possible. Shortly after that, the touchscreen smartphone we know and love today appeared on the market. Today’s phone is packed with features. I guess that’s why companies are having a hard time keeping their products small and slim. You can’t really shrink a device featuring a 4 inch display by a lot, can you? Well, every now and then I’ll take my time and flip through mobile phone concepts. For starters, I love to see what ideas some people have. On top of that, some of these handsets might eventually hit production stage and we might end up seeing them in stores a couple of years from now. Some of these phones can change their appearance while others look as if they’ve been pulled out of a SF movie. They’re all nice to look at though so we encourage you to go through the devices we’ve listed below.
The first time you set your eyes on this mobile phone you may be a small bit confused. That’s because it will also work as an earphone. If you initially see it as an earphone you’ll actually have no idea that it’s a bit more than an accessory for mobile phones. If you opo the center piece you’ll discover that the earpiece clip pings out, as the people from Yanko Design explain. If you clip the device to your ear, you’ve basically got a “phone-earphone”. You could also hold it and use it as a regular phone, if we can afford to call this little handset regular.
The designer of this phone called Ilshat Garipov thinks it might be a good idea to build the device out of multilayered polymer which would hold all the electronic components while at the same time ensuring that the mobile phone is extremely lightweight and slim. Another exciting thing we can say about this concept? It’s meant to change color to match your skin tone when you clip it to your ear.
We’ll all have to admit that Nokia should focus more on the products it’s releasing on the market and less on concepts. I say that because the Finish phone giant hasn’t come up with a lot of impressive handsets in the past few years. Perhaps it just can’t keep up to other companies like Apple, Motorola and Samsung. When it comes to concept phones though, Nokia has a lot to show. The Scentsory isn’t necessarily an impressive concept. It’s just plain weird the first time you look at it. You might wonder why they chose to include this foldable keypad kind of design. It doesn’t look particularly comfortable to type on.
The interesting part about the phone is that it offers smell. You’ll be able to assign certain scents to your contacts and probably tell who’s calling by what you smell at that time? This could become odd when you assign a smell for someone you don’t like so much. Nokia hasn’t revealed what kind of smells the device would offer from the start but apparently the Scentsory would be able to detect, transmit and emit smells as well. On top of that It’d radiate colors, lighting and temperature according to the caller’s environment thus making you feel and smell what that person is experiencing. When in flat mode this phone would feature a led touchpad, two screens and stereo speakers. In open mode you’ll get to see the sensors as well. Find even more information and photos of the device by going here.
This other concept from Nokia received its name because of its shape-shifting capabilities and I’ll be quite honest and mention that I’d love to see this one in stores. With the help of nanotechnology this device can be folder, it can act as a bracelet, it can look like a tablet and you may stretch it as well. Because of its molecular structure users will also get to clean it up easily. The Morph was launched alongside the Museum of Modern Art “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition and it’s meant to be a bridge between highly advanced technologies and the many benefits they can offer end-users.
As Nokia puts it, the Morph concept technologies could create great opportunities for mobile devices through newly-enabled flexible and transparent materials that can blend in better with our lifestyle and needs, materials that are self-cleaning and self-preserving, transparent electronics which can offer a completely different experience through their great looks and built in solar absorption which basically means that the device will charge on its own while batteries will become smaller, longer lasting and will charge in less time. Last thing you should know about the Morph is that it’s designed to sense the environment, allow you to analyze air pollution and learn more about bio-chemical traces and processes. Naturally, this could lead to us analyzing the conditions around us and establishing whether the food we eat should be washed or not. If you want to learn more about this very exciting concept you might want to visit Nokia’s webpage.
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You can probably tell by now that people are fascinated by transparent gadgets. Little does Microsoft know but Seunghan Song secretly believes this is what a Window Phone should look like. No, it’s not windows, it’s window but it’s not hard to get the two terms confused. While not a lot of people are fascinated by the weather, this mobile phone is exciting because it will actually react to weather and changed its appearance based on what’s outside your house. If it’s sunny outside you’ll get a clear mobile phone. If it’s raining then you’ll see your mobile phone look damp and foggy. Reportedly this concept also has a special user interface that will allow its handler to input text by drawing it on the phone’s surface. The phone will go in hand writing mode when you blow on it, oddly enough. So if you see someone constantly blowing on his/her mobile phone, then you can suspect that the Window phone went into production and it’s already available for sale somewhere.
Ok, I’ll admit it, aside from being a looker, this phone doesn’t seem to have much to offer hence it probably wouldn’t sell in massive numbers if it ever became a real product. Meanwhile we can just stare at the photos and admit that at least it looks really nice.
Want a larger screen but a bigger phone at the same time? Don’t we all? Ever since smartphones are invading the market we simply love their large screens that we can browse the web more comfortably on. We can even watch movies now. Things have changed a lot since mobile phones used to feature one and a half inch displays. The problem now Is that smartphones are a bit bulky. As slim and nice as an iPhone 4 might be, it’s still large. You can’t really complain because that’s the way things are. You can’t chop that display in half or expect it to fold. Or can you?
Well, this Sony Ericsson concept phone can. The FH Mobile phone has a pivotal point, as its designer Du Jun explains. It will flip vertical on a pivot and mimic a phone and then it will rotate sideways and become a larger screen which you can use for web browsing, watching videos or looking at photos (for short anything you might want to have a larger screen for). When split in two, this handset will apparently become an intercom as well, enabling convenient communication between two parties holding each end. So basically it’s one device that can split into two walkie talkies and it inspires questions such as “what will these people think of next?” While this phone is merely a concept, it’s one we’d like to see in stores soon if possible. With this we’d get a small mobile phone, a large screen and two walkie talkies all in one. Sounds pretty good to me.
