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.

Comments

It does so much...

[typobox43]

But can you actually make phone calls with it?

Off topic, but ...

[grokBoy]

... I recall hex editing someone's keyboard mappings (Windows) so that the misplaced keys still generated the correct letters.

Hours of fun, especially for touch typists =)

Re:Off topic, but ...

[sonicattack]

Yes, I did a similar thing when I attended a computer course years ago. Xmodmap can be fun if you gain access to another user's X server. One of the guys in the front of the classroom got bewildered trying to surf the web with some of the most common keys subtly transposed.

Shifting keys around as a joke reminds me of another story too, a bit more interesting.

Some guy called his network admin and asked for help with a "password problem". It seemed as he could log into his account when sitting down on the chair in front of the computer, but if he tried to log in standing up (!), he would get a "wrong password" error. The admin asked for the password and tried it himself. Sure enough, when he sat down, the system would let him log. When he stood up and tried logging in with the same name and password, no go. Now this is not the usual kind of problem you run into. So he checked if there was some kind of interference, like some cable being shifted when anyone stood up from the chair, but he couldn't find any such thing.

It turned out that someone, as a joke, had physically transposed two keys on the keyboard. Now, how could this cause the problem? Well, both the guy with the account and the admin were touch typists, and sitting down, they didn't need to look what keys they pressed. But standing up, they had to peek at the keyboard to get the keys "right". Which they didn't, of course.

Now I can't remember where I heard this story first (Slashdot?), and I've most certainly not remembered all the details correctly, but admit it's a cool story nevertheless! :)

Re:Off topic, but ...

[rasteri]

A similar story -

I once changed around the number keys at the top of the keyboard so that they went 0123456789 instead of 1234567890... it took the IT support staff weeks to figure out what was going on :)

Re:Great

[Trigun]

if you can video conference with it, you'll have to explain to you boss why you're laughing every time he calls you.

Pictures

[KillerLoop]

Just in case anybody is interested how this thing actually looks:
http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,42298,00.html

Faceplate revenue

[tessaiga]

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.

Inkjet + cell phone == problems?

[JessLeah]

Does the ink run? Holding a cell phone in your hand on a hot day is a recipe for running ink... as is drinking a glass of water next to the phone and touching the glass to the phone accidentally. Is there some sort of lamination or waterproofing provided? Otherwise, I don't think the printouts will last too long in "real world" use.

Re:Inkjet + cell phone == problems?

[gl4ss]

i dunno how often you get water INSIDE your phone.. but that's not usually a problem for me.

it looks like the plates go under the plastic covers rather than staying on the the top(heck, if you just want that then you can print your own covers now and glue them on the phone).

Interesting

[Timesprout]

That mobile phones, one of the most useful applications of technology ever are so ubiqutious they are now practically being treated as fashion accessories rather than technology.

Maybe I'm just tired

[Henry V .009]

If I had heard about this any place except Slashdot, I would have assumed that the intended market for this product was 12-year-old girls. I had to re-read the article twice to confirm that there really wasn't anything at all interesting about this phone. News for Nerds? What the hell?

Re:Maybe I'm just tired

[Mulletproof]

Teenage girls are what drive the cellphone economy in Japan...

Issue with the phone

[phoxix]

While I was looking at the Phone.

I thought to myself: How on earth am I supposed to dial with those keys?

Am I the only one thinking about this ?

Good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can keep my vi cheatsheet with me wherever I go.

Changing keyboards

[freeweed]

Many, many moons ago the place I worked at had a computer tech with a bizzare sense of humor.

Every year in December, he'd replace the boss' keyboard's L with a J key. We'd ask him why, and he'd say "because this way you now have a Christmas keyboard".

"Huh?"

"No L".

*cymbal crash*

Keys

[spoonist]

What's up with Nokia keypad layouts, anyway?

Go here and look at some phones.

The 3650 are in a circle. I gave up rotary dial decades ago, I don't want to be reminded.

The 3510 is like a spider web or something.

The 8910i doesn't have any keys at all! (Just kidding... I know they're under a cover.)

This 3200 looks like it doesn't have enough keys.

The 2100 looks like a smiley face.

With all these funky keys, how does Nokia expect me to dial a freakin' phone while I'm driving my SUV at 90mph in the right lane eating two cheese burgers and a Coke?

Apple did it already

[rufo]

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.