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Nokia Shows Off Phone with Printable Faceplate
jonknee writes "Nokia is prepping a new phone that one-ups all the other attempts at face plates... you can print your own! Just place one of the template pages it comes with (you can buy more) into your ink jet, and make a nifty design that isn't mass marketed at every mall this side of the Mississippi. The template is perforated so you can get a nice fit around the keys. The phone looks pretty nifty as well: camera, flashlight, FM radio and about everything else." It might be fun to rename someone's keys as a practical joke, not that I've ever done it to anyone's computer keyboard.
I believe you can't actually rebadge the keys, the template has holes punched out that fit around the keys, much like Nokia's faceplates for the current phones.
SO you actually don't see that much of your design on the front -- it is all keys and screen -- but a lot of it on the back.
Just in case anybody is interested how this thing actually looks:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,42298,00.html
There's specs and some more PR stuff on the 3200 from the Nokia site.
Sounds like something that'll catch on with the younger crowd; I'm surprised that no one else has done it yet. On the other hand, faceplates are a big business with that same demographic, so maybe no one's tried it because they'd rather make you pay to customize.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
Even though this Nokia phone looks good but I would spend my $$ on this one:
Handspring Treo 600 Getting Closer
The story behind it's design
More images
Another image
More info on how it will look like
Treo 600 in Europe next week?
Future Phones/PDA's
Apple's PowerBook 1400 did it already with the BookCover. There's a removable clear plastic cover (they also included one of grey plastic in case you didn't like the idea) that slides off the top part of the laptop, and underneath you can put any appropriately shaped piece of paper. It even came with templates pre-installed on the hard drive so you could design something to place there. Was kind of a cool idea, but it didn't really take off, as one can easily see.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Joke would be on you if you did this to someone like me who types on a QWERTY keyboard but with the OS set to Dvorak. They probably wouldn't notice the renaming.
since phonescoop.com seems to be down, here is another site with more info about the phone.
Interesting feedback. I did come across this paper whilst researching the subject - essentially it's a phone/meter linked together to forward results for analysis and feedback, but it's not a single, integrated unit. Research sponsored by Vodaphone (UK) with trials supposedly started in July 2003.
AT&ROFLMAO