Facebook Phone Design

Spotted on Yanko Design, a Facebook phone as imagined by designer Michal Bonikowski.

Shikun Sun’s DrawBraille smartphone for the blind

I've seen braille cell phones before, but never quite like this one. Shikun Sun’s DrawBraille concept phone is a smartphone for the blind.

The DrawBraille Mobile Phone is a cell phone that uses a braille board and finger pads that allow the blind to communicate efficiently. And this isn’t any old phone either – the design includes a book reader, text messaging, email, and even music capabilities.

The DrawBraille Mobile Phone has two main pieces. The first is comprised of 35 braille buttons in five rows. Since the main keyboard cannot hold the entire braille text, there are also raised “scroll up” and “scroll down” buttons for more options. The second piece is similar to the touch screen on many smart phones, but with a unique raised surface for information input. The user can tap and drag and even create their own shortcuts and words through a combination of commands.

[Inhabitat via Yankodesign]

Flexible Display PaperPhone

Spotted on Daily Mobile, a video of a touch phone responding not to a touch screen, but to bending it's flexible frame.

Other paper phones blogged by textually over the years.

Nose Stylus for iPhone

Spotted on intomobile, a stylus for iPhone that fits over your nose.

Origami cell phone design concept

Spotted on Ubergizmo, an origami phone design concept by Chengyuan Wei. [via Yanko Design]

Links to other origami and paper phones blogged by textually over the years.

Aston Martin Smartphone

Spotted on Tom's Guide, an Aston Martin smartphone concept.

According to Telematics News:

The British luxury car brand Aston Martin, and the Canadian luxury mobile phone manufacturer Mobiado are collaborating to produce a collection of luxury mobile handsets. Together, the companies have unveiled the CPT002 phone concept, at BaselWorld 2011, Switzerland’s premiere luxury goods trade show for the watch and jewelry industry.

The CPT002 software combines with the vehicle GPS providing a new level of social network experience:

FourSquare will show user’s current location as well as the location of his friends and nearby venues all integrated on a GPS map of the Aston Martin car display, to help the user plan his night and organize parking locations.

Cameras integrated into the vehicle can be set to periodically update FaceBook and Twitter with pictures, video, and information of passing cities/landmarks during road trips, or can update social sites in real time with your progress during race track days.

More features.

Elfoid: A humanoid mobile phone

Spotted on Pink Tentacle, a prototype of a handheld humanoid phone, called "Elfoid P1", developped by robotics researchers from Osaka University who teamed up with NTT Docomo and Qualcomm.

The creepy concept was unveiled at a presentation in Tokyo on March 3. It should be available in 5 years.

Cell phone concept phones blow, kiss and touch to make talking intimate

Speaking at a TED event in Berlin, design researcher, Fabian Hemmert showed off three cellphone prototypes that would put the "touch" back in "keeping in touch." Dvice reports.

The first phone replicates touch by using a small motor attached to a cord that applies pressure to the back of the user's hand.

Another cellphone simulates moisture using a wet sponge inside of the device that pushes against your lips.

The last phone demonstrated blows a puff of air onto your neck or ear.

Hemmert thinks that the physicality of telecommunications will be very important in the future. He envisions a world where people will send a kiss over their cellphones instead of a text message.

Read full article.

Related, sort of: Two Pantech cellphones launched in 2009 featured "wind recognition", allowing users to blow an emoticon kiss during a video call.

Levitating cell phone concept

Yanko Design reports on what may just be the next big thing in smartphone/charger design.

Metatrend Media designers In-oh Yoo and Sun-woong Oh have designed a concept combination charging station and phone where the phone rests in space between two magnets in the charger during the charging process.

The concept, which would presumably replace the standard clock-radio adorning nightstands across the world, would feature magnets that would suspend the phone and cause it to spin when a call or SMS comes in. The message or caller ID would be displayed in 3D via an after-image effect.

[via PC World]

Innovation: The smartphone's shape-shifting future

The smartphone of the future might lose its sleek, solid shell to become soft and squeezable, able to alter its appearance to signal an alert. New Scientist reports.

Shwetak Patel, a computer science and engineering researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues have developed a squeezable cellphone – SqueezeBlock – using tiny motors built into the casing to mimic the behaviour of a spring.

... Shwetak's team isn't alone in exploring how a handset's physical attributes could communicate something about its state. Back in 2008, Fabian Hemmert, a researcher at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, Germany, breathed virtual life into a cellphone. His phone "inhales" and "exhales" at a steady rate, which can increase suddenly to indicate an incoming call, or ebb away as the battery dies.

Read full article.

Other squeezable cell phone concepts: -The soft phone concept by Qian

Nokia New Concept Phone Lets You Re-Charge in Your Pocket

I've gotten bored with concept phones, but this one caught my eye. The Nokia E-Cu by Patrick Hyland let's you recharge in your pocket.

[via Inhabitat]

iPhone Killer: A statement about current tech products and status

Spotted on boingboing via Dezeen, Ronen Kadishin's "iPhonekiller". An open-source mallet for smashing up iPhones, the device features 1.6kg of laser-cut steel attached to a wooden handle.The design can be downloaded and adapted from Kadushin’s website.

In his own words:

The iPhonekiller is a statement about current tech products and personalities status, worshiped by the media and public, along with my possibilities to react and criticize that in a humorous way, with an Open Design. Price upon request.

Open Design [Ronen kadishin via Dezeen]

Concept phones Gallery on Le Monde

French daily Le Monde published an amazing gallery of concept phones last Friday.

Below are are my two favorites:

The soap phone, it's washable.

The fold-a-phone. So thin, you can fold it like paper.

View full gallery.

[via RaphaelHunold/Twitter]

The Bathphone

Spotted on Trendhunter, the bathphone concept phone. To take calls while you soak. By South Korean designer Yoon Ungnoh.

DoCoMo Shows Off Concept Phone Made from Wood

Japan's NTT DoCoMo says that it has developed a mobile phone prototype made with the surplus wood of trees culled during thinning operations to maintain healthy forests. The prototype was created in collaboration with Sharp, Olympus and "more trees," a reforestation project founded by musician Ryuichi Sakamoto and others.

[via Cellular News]

Related concept phones made out of wood:

-- The nautical-aesthetic S-SERIES wooden mobile phone

-- S-series: wood-like concept mobile phone

-- The CulArt concept phone

-- Woood (2007) - Smart Phone Concept

-- The Ziricote (wooden) PHONE. One of a kind by Hulger

-- Gresso's mobile phone made of African Blackwood and Gold

-- Wooden handmade Cellphones from Mozambique

-- Hand-carved wooden phones from Russia

-- Fand-carved wooden "phones" from Helsinki

The Molecular Telephone

Spotted on Yanko Design, a Molecular Telephone concept. By Tjep Design for the O2 company.

A new Color Rings Cell Phone Concept

Spotted on IntoMobile via Ubergizmo, a new Color Rings ‘Handset’ concept from designers bck. We haven't seen one of these since 2004.

In their own words: The color rings are an accessory for cell phones that are inspired in the gestural language of the use of the phone. It is conceived as an extension of the hand, which makes their use a more natural one, and more comfortable and more attractive as well.

Other Ring Phones:

-- The Ring Phone - The winning submission at the 2004 Siemens Design Challenge. a competition for best new mobile phone design.

-- Ring phone concept - 24-year old designer Tao Ma won first prize in the Sony Ericsson 2004 Phone Concept Design Competition in China for his Ring Phone Concept.

-- Let Your Fingers and Toes Do the Talking- A Ring Phone concept for mobile phones, part of Technojewelry which incorporates emerging electronics into everyday attire.

X-ray Photograph of a cell phone

Nick Veasey uses x-ray machines of various sizes to create stunning photography of everyday objects.

Ad Lab via The Telegraph.

A different-looking phone concept

A phone concept from New York based still life photographer Horacio Salinas. He works with Vogue, The New York Times, GQ amongst other to create fashion editorial or even illustrate articles.

[via Trend.Land]

Window Phone concept predicts the weather

Spotted on Yanko Design, The ‘Window Phone’ concept by Seunghan Song that makes accurate predictions and even changes its display to reflect the climatic conditions outdoors.

Universal Phone Concept for both blind and sighted people

The Universal Phone, by D Seunghan Song, is designed for both blind and sighted people. How does it work? Thousands of micro pins dynamically raise and lower forming a tactile surface for all to get touchy with. Sighted people get the elusive tactile.

[Yanko Design]

Fat burning concept phone

The Stix concept phone is designed by Cyrene Quiamco and helps burn off calories to keep you in shape. This innovative device will only charge up again if you jog, jump, shake, or perform any other exercise so your kinetic energy can keep it working.

The actual phone wraps around your wrist and comes with a pedometer and heart rate monitor to track your vitals and help you maintain a healthy lifestyle.

[via Trendhunter]

Take a cell phone Swig!

The “Cheers” cell phone concept is powered by an efficient, maybe even energy-saving Alcohol-cell. By Designer: Tryi Yeh.

[via Yanko Design]

The Power Of My Wrist

The Dyson Energy Bracelet - by designers: Mathieu Servais, Camille Lefer, Clément Faydi & Mickaël Denié - is a gadget that uses Seebeck effect (= the thermoelectric effect is the direct conversion of temperature differences to electric voltage and vice versa. ) to harness energy and power your mobile phones for a few precious minutes more, when you desperately need it.

[via Yanko Design]

Phone, Ear-Phone, Phone Concept

Spotted on Yanko Design, the Kambala, a mobile phone that transforms to an earphone. Simply pop the center piece and the earpiece clip pings out; clip this to your ear, and you got a phone-earphone.

By Designer: Ilshat Garipov.

Motorola celebrates 25 years of mobile phones with 12 concepts that look nothing like mobile phones

... Thirty one of Motorola's designers, from five different offices around the globe, have been dedicating a portion of their time since late last year to a project called "Motorola 2033."

The initiative, under the auspices of the Consumer Experience Design team (CXD), uses the 25th anniversary of the mobile phone as an opportunity to imagine mobile device design 25 years on, resulting in a curious set of research-based blue sky concepts rooted in some fantastical, yet plausible suppositions.

[via Core77]

Holographic Text Messages

Spotted on TrendHunting.

Holographic Text Messages will rock your world. With 1.5 million views in just a couple weeks, this viral video proves it. The video, by Inha Luke Yoo describes the concept as HoloText Messaging.

The kicker of course, is that this sort of technology isn’t yet available. But this concept video does a great job of showing you what holographic text messages will be like.

Ondo Concept Phone Twists and Bends to Edit Music

Spotted on Mobiledia, the Ondo, a new concept music phone that physically twists and bends to edit music on the go.

Glassy Glassy Mobile Phone Concept

Spotted on Ubergizmo via Likecool, The Glassy Glassy Mobile Phone Concept by Tokyo based designer Mac Funamizu.

Pretty.

Touch Screen Rotary Phone

Spotted on Yanko Design, a Touch Screen Rotary phone by Designer Mark Miller.