Future(?) Design of Mobile Phones 162
Sad Loser writes "The future of the mobile phone is here, or at least a bunch of Nokia-sponsored industrial design students' take on the problem.
The BBC also has more pictures." Most of these designs are quite silly (a necklace with squeezable beads for an address book?) but at least amusing.
if this is the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:if this is the future... (Score:1)
It looks like only one or two of these phones were designed by anyone who understands a basic principal: form follows function.
The real cellphone of the future? Maybe an earpiece with a single button to activate voice commands...
Re:if this is the future... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll walk down the street talking to myself, and smacking myself in the face whenever I lose signal, and (this is the good bit) I'll never get panhandled again.
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2)
Heck, I'm okay with having the "real" phone in my pocket, and a low power link to the earpiece, I just want the earpiece to be unnoticable.
Re:if this is the future... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2)
Re:if this is the future... (Score:3, Insightful)
The cell phone industry is ripe for the taking for the 1st company that comes out with a cell phone that is simple and as easy to use (and indestructable) as a home phone.
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2)
They are competing for an internship at Nokia. I don't think they would get it if they hand in a Nokia 3110. It is about creating something wild, that fulfills a particular role.
If you can't find a phone that is easy to use (Motorola C117, C139) - then maybe, just maybe it is you.
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2)
I think the newer trend in telecom devices will be towards devices with a slight heft to them. More rugged devices, ones that feel like they won't bust when you drop them or get caught in a rainstorm. People have a psychological tendency to equate dense and solid equipment with quality and durability, so I expect manufacturers to expl
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2, Funny)
Er...sorry, lost it there for a sec.
Re:if this is the future... (Score:2)
Functions:
1. Phone
2. Calendar
2. Contacts
4. MP3 player
5. Basic web service (movie times, make reservations, etc.)
6. Decent battery life (i.e., 18 hours continuous use and then recharge)
Form:
Make it in the form of a standard belt with nearly invisible, and flexible/durable attachments. It has two small wireless headphones that I can use together for stereo or seperate for mono. These might be designed to look studs around the whole belt or something I
As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As usual (Score:2, Funny)
Re:As usual (Score:2)
And here I thought that was among the most important aspects of design.
Re:As usual (Score:2)
Re:As usual (Score:2, Funny)
Are you saying "smell transmission" is impossible?!
Just let me point out two things:
1. Farting into your smell-transmitting phone while the opposite party is, say, in a room full of people would be INCREDIBLE
2. The professor did it in Futurama with the "smelloscope," so clearly, it is rather possible.
Re:As usual (Score:3, Funny)
Vaguely interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're nine years old, your zany ideas earn you a spot on the fridge for your new drawing. When you're in college, I guess it earns you a gallery on BBC news.
I see (Score:3, Insightful)
The winner of the competition is the Nokia 111 by Daniel Meyer, and this is where the New Age speak goes into overdrive. The phone looks - to our eye - like a candy bar with a hinge in the middle, but it is, apparently: "Inspired both by the advent of video calling and the traditional practice of carrying pictures of friends or family members with you. The handset is designed to sit as a picture frame wherever the user is, serving the dual purpose of communications device and a comforting familiar focal point; at home, at work or in a hotel while away on business."
It's also a great way to carry your porn more portably or annoy everyone in your office with a photo montage of baby pictures.
Forgive my neo-Ludditism, but why does a cell phone have to be more than a phone? I say this as the owner of a Motorola V360, an excellent phone that also happens to have an MP3 player built in, which is one of the more useful accessories a phone could conceivably have, and saved me the trouble of buying another thing to tote around. I have a camera for pictures, but I wouldn't feel the need to set the phone down and display those pictures. Let's not forget, battery life is not all that great and using your phone as a slideshow probably wouldn't help.
Look, either build the über device that does everything or stop trying to load mobile phones down with too much gadgetry.
Re:I see (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the big, bulky, annoying, expensive part of carrying electronic devices around is a combination of:
Why carry more than one of each of those around when you don't have to?
Re:I see (Score:2)
Why carry more than one of each of those around when you don't have to?
On the one hand it makes sense, but on the other, isn't there some critical mass of things you can cram into a small package at this time? Battery technology being what it is, it seems the more you ask a device to do, the less it will actually be able to do. What's the point of having everything together if you're constantly tied to a power socket to run it all?
And I've noted, that despite such things, I still see plenty of people
Re:I see (Score:5, Insightful)
Phones have been getting smaller and smaller up until a couple of years ago, where they levelled off. I think that's more to do with the fact that you can't make phones any smaller without making the interface unusable rather than any space issue.
Obviously battery life is important, but how many of these features are actually wasting power when they aren't in use? And if they are in use, then what are you saving the power for, if not to use the device?
That may be common, but I don't think it's an intrinsic consequence of convergence. And even if separate devices are of a higher quality, two separate devices of high quality aren't necessarily better than a single device that is good enough.
For example, I'm not going to carry a camera everywhere I go. I am going to carry my phone everywhere I go. I might be able to get higher quality photos from a digital camera, but that's of no use to me if I don't have the camera with me when I want to take a photo. Thus the camera phone is of more value than a separate phone and camera, even if the quality is lower. Sure, if I'm going somewhere where I expect to take photos, I'd bring a camera, but that's of absolutely no use to me when most of my photos are taken on the spur of the moment.
Re:I see (Score:2)
Why is the average standby time of my now ancient t39m so much better then that of my newer k300i, despite the later having a higher capacity and newer battery?
To add some reasons for not wanting to combine all kinds of devices into one:
Re:I see (Score:2)
You'd have to ask the makers. It could be for any number of reasons unrelated to convergence. If you wish to claim that convergence was the cause, please say so and offer evidence beyond idle speculation.
If you have
Re:I see (Score:2)
Convergence results in color screen which also needs backlit in many cases, more powerfull cpu, more memory. Yes, all those things use more energy then needed even when not using any of the features resulting from convergence.
If you have these things in separate devices, then you are carrying three screens,
Re:I see (Score:2)
Re:I see (Score:2)
Re:I see (Score:2)
Re:I see (Score:2)
Using any kind of third party MP3 player is actually harder in this respect - there's the hassle of pausing the music playback and removing the headphones before you can actually answer a call.
Re:I see (Score:2)
That is true of a mechanical mechanism. I feel the opposite is true of software. If the hardware on a phone is capable of running just about any piece of software then the more things it tries to do the better it does all of them.
Re:I see (Score:2)
Re:I see (Score:2)
Re:I see (Score:2)
You can do all that already. There are "personal" file servers for bluetooth and wifi you can carry about. Media players have settings for microdrives where they cache each song (saves battery). You can get bluetooth stereo headphones. I'm sure there are cameras with BT, I've seen ones (Canon?) that had WiFi.
The only difference from your idea is that you need a phone PDA at the centre of it. That has your screen and keyboard (touch-screen) in one item, and you can also use it as a standalone phone without
Re:I see (Score:2)
Okay, we should agree that the design-speak in saying "[T]he handset is designed to sit as a picture frame wherever the user is, serving the dual purpose of communications device and a comforting familiar focal point; at home, at work or in a hotel while away on business" is quite thick. But some part of the concept here is that the cell phone can be in some way "less" than a phone in that you can integrate it comfortably i
Re:I see (Score:2)
Also if phones are going to have GPS built in having the thing dis
Re:I see (Score:2)
It doesn't have to, and many computers are used in a single purpose way.
I assume you are talking about the typical pc however, which is a general purpose computer. This indeed implies it does multiple things (tho few if any of them really well).
I am willing to buy the 'a mobile phone is a general purpose mobile communications device' idea, its just that either the phone has to be too big or the screen ends up too small for using it comfor
Re:phones are only being held back by the carriers (Score:2)
I'd also mention that this phone has a 1 megapixel camera on it as well. It doesn't take the greatest pictures, but considering it adds apparently next to nothing to the bulk of the phone (it really is thin), it's one more bullet to add to
New Yorker Cartoon (Score:4, Funny)
Man talking to a clerk in a cell phone store: "Do you have one of those phones you can talk to people on?"
Re:New Yorker Cartoon (Score:3, Funny)
I am fairly convinced that... (Score:1)
I applaud their creativity. But I still want a cell phone that works > 99% of the time as a freakin' phone.
Ah, that's just the usual, then (Score:2)
And smell reproduction has been one of those bad ideas that just won't stay dead. It's been popping up again and again, as computer peripheral, phone peripheral, etc. Just when you think yo
Re:Sweetheart? (Score:2)
Nah, she just has it set to "vibrate".
Nothing else to do (Score:3, Insightful)
Fashion in Space [slashdot.org]
I mean a phone that picks up smells? What for? What could possibly be the use for that? I don't know about you but I would rather not have the person on the other end know I just let one go after too much chilli.
A phone that has beads to call people. Looking at my cellphone I have over a 100 contacts for business and personal. That's an awful lot of beads... might be the new 2015 style bling!
Actually... (Score:1)
Certainly some of them look less retarded than some of the things nokia come up with.
The phone is your friend? (Score:2, Insightful)
The aim was a user friendly product that gave an emotional relationship, like a friend
People shouldn't have emotional relationships with phones. A phone is just a tool, nothing more. There isn't enough love in the world to waste it on consumer electronics.
Re:The phone is your friend? (Score:2)
Actually, the relationship one has with one's phone is much more subtile than that.
There have been a number of studies [aber.ac.uk] that seem to point to the way a telephone user will express one's self as if though the person they are talking with on the telephone was actually there. Phone conversations with intimate associates tend to contain body languages that express that relationship, while a telephone conversation with one's boss will result, generally, in postures that reflect that relationship.
Additionally th
OT: You would be quite interested in my movie (Score:2)
Check out my film trailer of "Eve" for a possible future scenario to do with just this concept.
But will it get (Score:1)
2015? (Score:2, Interesting)
2015? As in, nearly ten years from now? Nobody seriously expects phones to be recognisably unique devices by then, do they? It's nigh-on impossible to buy a mobile phone these days that does not incorporate, to a significant degree, functions for which there are already devices available.
It's widely accepted in the industry that within 10 years', when cameras, mp3 players and all sorts of other gadgets are sufficiently advan
Re:2015? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:2015? (Score:2)
To be fair... Semi-Strong Ai will be theoretically possible on $2,000 peice of hardware by then if Moore's law holds true.
And I use the term theoretically in a very vague kind of way... Personally I'd hope that my cell phon
I wish... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I wish... (Score:2)
What about exploiting short-range wireless tech like blue tooth? Each device has its own storage. If you connect it to a storage unit then your phone can store your address book on it. Connect a camera to the storage device & your phone and you can store it on there or ship it to your phone to send to some
Re:I wish... (Score:2)
Re:I wish... (Score:2)
Yeah. I want to see Zoolander edition phones. When are we gonna get those?
Re:I wish... (Score:2)
personally... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Phone
2) PDA
3) MP3 player
4) Camera
Things I DON'T want in a mobile device:
1) Smells
2) Life philosophy
3) Being locked into one service provider
It's funny how how 5 years ago my want list would have made me a cuttng edge geek, and now it makes me a luddite.
Beads? (Score:1)
These are from design student's (Score:4, Insightful)
It is a designers job to create something that appeals to the market in terms of form. It is the engineers job to create something that works. And together with many others they create a product that has parts of both worlds.
Also, for everybody talking about "well, I just want a phone that gets good reception" that's a network design problem for the most part, not a device problem.
-dave
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
I think you answered your own question. Obviously these designers have failed to create something that appeals to this market in terms of form.
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
These designs are a competition for a Nokia Internship. You have to design something different, something that stands out. You aren't going to win by handing in a Nokia 3110. YOu creat something which makes people think about the future, and maybe fulfils one task well.
Re:These are from design student's (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
I think there are too many engineers, not enough designers here on
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
Some actual architects do actually appear to fall in to this catagory. Especially if they are several steps removed from the people who will be expected to actually use the bu
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
Re:These are from design student's (Score:2)
Do you honestly think the first design iteration of the iPod (or MacBook Pro, etc.) was exactly like it is now? Absolutely not.
-dave
Caught in the old Paradigm (Score:2)
Re:Caught in the old Paradigm (Score:2)
I Want a Bluetooth Speakerphone Badge (ST:TNG) (Score:4, Interesting)
My present mobile flips open, lets me talk speakerphone style holding it out in front of me, and I can contact whomever I want by saying their name or saying the phone number... very much like the communicators in the original Star Trek series. (I wish I could reprogram it to chirp like a 'communicator' instead of its "Say a command.")
We've seen those Bluetooth earphone-mic sets. What about a Bluetooth speakerphone badge? The main phone would be somewhere else on your person, but the little badge could be worn closer to your head and have a simple touch-to-activate/hangup interface like in the "Next Generation" Star Trek series.
Re:I Want a Bluetooth Speakerphone Badge (ST:TNG) (Score:2)
Because most of us are trying to discourage this star trek stereotype, not reinforce it.
Everytime there is a story about Mobile phones, there are the people who want a simple phone but are incapable of asking for one a phone shop, and there are the ones who want a trek communicator. Bravo.
Star Trek Badgers (Score:3, Insightful)
Good short term designs (Score:2)
Silly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Silly? (Score:2)
Re:Silly? (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here we go again (Score:3, Interesting)
Nokia 6800 - they made thousands on the expectation that people would want a qwerty keyboard to send text messages, so I got one dirt cheap and use it for ssh. Other manufacturers are also trying the same thing and may hit the same pitfall, so you may be able to get something newer that can do the same thing dirt cheap.
I thought the most useless feature on the thing was the radio until I took a bus to work a few times and use
Re:Here we go again (Score:2)
Not until the cellphones are convincingly secure. The current ones are laughably broken (attack vectors via bluetooth and sometimes even SMS for people to take over your phone and capture your ssh key). This is unlikely to happen while the firmware is proprietary crud, and the firmware won't stop being proprietary crud until the networks stop using it as a method for controlling you (most
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Here we go again (Score:2)
My Nokia "collection"... (Score:2, Insightful)
My old Nokia 3330 was a lot faster to hang up a call and lock the keypad. I've waited 20 seconds with no apps running in the background on the 6680 for the thing to accept any input after ending a call.
There is Salling Clicker though which kinda makes up for it - one of the best phone advancements I've used in a while (no-one mention 3G please).
same old, same old (Score:2)
i want a phone with:
* good sound quality
* sms capability
* alarm
* contacts
* list of incoming and outgoing calls
* a nice, clean and simple interface
and yeah, good battery time as well
and as a clip-on, or the deluxe-version, one could add/buy something that allows one to connect to the laptop to the net
is that so hard to do?
it SHOULD be cheap as f'ck to develop nowadays, just double the price and sell it to me and i'll thank you for a loooong
Design students on crack (Score:2)
Oh come on (Score:2, Insightful)
The important "Mouth to Ear" measurement (Score:2, Interesting)
Prince Charles [While admiring the half brick sized phone in his hands] "Ahhem, it's really amazing how small you can make these things"..."but what's to stop you maing them even smaller?"
Designer [While thinking what a dumb ass question that was]: "Well sir, the distance between your mouth and your ear"
Wi
Re:The important "Mouth to Ear" measurement (Score:2)
Always new "concepts"... (Score:2)
Why don't they put their money where their fucking mouth is and release some ACTUAL good phones? Or at least bring some of their nice european phones to North America.
I'm a fan of Nokia, but what's been available here for the past few years has been absolutely shameful.
I just want to talk on the GD phone (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that all the other "features" being added daily are not for the benefit of the owner of the phone. They're yet more things to charge the owner for using.
Sell connectivity like a commodity.
I don't want to see "no network" when I'm looking directly at a freakin' cell tower.
I don't give a shit who owns the tower. Share your infrastructure.
The same companies that sell the mobile comms already do this with their hard lines, so don't say it's not feasible.
Somebody's already claiming to do this (verizon?). The rest of you idiots, take a lesson.
Build a durable phone with a decent battery.
It doesn't have to be so tiny or so cool I can wear it on my chest and slap it when I want to talk to the Enterprise.
It just has to make and receive calls. That's it.
Make it out of the stuff that Ma Bell used to make the rental phones out of. It'll never break.
Once you figure out the basic infrastructure and handhelds required for TALKING ON THE FREAKING PHONE, you can worry about selling me extraneous bullshit that I don't want.
Mod parent +100 RighteousAssKick! (Score:2)
I have freinds who always go on like "Oh, my phone has games".
"When do you play them," asks I.
"Oh, I never do," says they, "But it's cool."
:-\
Re:I just want to talk on the GD phone (Score:3, Insightful)
I second this! Why the hell does my phone need to support smell?? What type of insecure individual needs to build a relationship with their phone?
I hated every one of these phones for several reason: Stupid technology (smell), Childish throwbacks (care-bears/pretty pony necklace), Stupid design premise (relationship/feelings with an inanimate object).
Where is the damn phone design that includes: Long battery life, excellent reception, low-cost/high-bandwidth capabilities? Durable/Rugged? Good coverage?
Re:I just want to talk on the GD phone (Score:2)
Guess what, the phones already do that and have done for ages. It Just Works(tm) pretty much all over the world, except in the US. Go shout at the your braindead network operators and let the rest of us, with more-or-less 100% cell coverage and functional roaming, enjoy the advanced phones.
BTW, I live in Norway. There are 4.6 million people living here, about 1 million of them around Oslo and the rest pretty thinly spread out. Go look at a map of Norw
Re:I just want to talk on the GD phone (Score:2)
OK, against the mainstream... (Score:3, Insightful)
Getting people to think about cell phones and their future is the intent of the design work - the intent is not necessarily to produce viable phones, just ideas.
I think it is not easy to come up with refreshing and original ideas. It seems easy to criticize the ideas of others - but try to look at it from another angle: What would your design be?
Solutions looking for problems (Score:2)
I see a bunch of people in a hazy room taking hits off a joint and saying, "Dude...what if we made it with...beads?
These are solutions looking for problems. Mobile phones are real devices that people have real problems with. Bad reception, poor screen readability, slow response time, small buttons, poor durability. But I see nothing here that addresses those issues.
"...no, no, no, man...it really needs
These are a lot like concept cars (Score:2)
crazy cell phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Pfft... (Score:2)
I think this one actually has more features than my HTPC... http://www.vodafone.jp/english/products/model_3G/v 905sh/index.html [vodafone.jp]
You missed it...they're gone already (Score:2)
Oh sure, they could do other things (most had some form of redial, and rudumentary calendars and contact lists), but that's sort of like using your iPod as an organizer or PIM - it can be done, but it's really not made for it.
No, I'm afraid the days of a clean, simple interface are gone.