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Future(?) Design of Mobile Phones
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 what the future holds, I think I need to get started with my curmudgeonly rantings about how great cell phones were in the past.
This guy's the limit!
As usual, most of these designs aren't even possible and won't be possible in the near future. What do they teach these design students anyway? Seems more like an art-college for the artistically challenged.
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In elementary school, I was in the "gifted" class where they'd ocasionally have us do creative projects liek this instead of normal schoolwork. Most of the results of those were at about the same level of insanity as these. Mine in particular tended to go in more of a rocket-pack/robot motorcyle direction.
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.
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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.
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I'm reminded of a cartoon that came up on my New Yorker daily desk calendar last week (the cartoon now has a permanent spot on my fridge):
Man talking to a clerk in a cell phone store: "Do you have one of those phones you can talk to people on?"
This guy's the limit!
These are the same people that want to bring fashion to space suits right?
Fashion in Space
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!
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.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
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 advanced and shrunk, everyone will be toting Multi-Function-Devices such that calling it a "phone" would be like calling a laptop an "electronic typewriter".
Now, those of us who are of a practical or ludditish bent will say that we prefer our devices to be discrete (as in separate) so that we don't have to upgrade everything at once and can stick with what we like. Personally, I'd like to see a move towards modular technology with standard interfaces - you buy your basic model, and detach/reattach parts as they become more advance and cheaper, so you swap out your 2M camera module for a 10M SLR, or a gaming processor unit, or whatever. However, it's not likely to happen as it means phone manufacturers have a smaller turnover, smaller businesses can get a better foothold, and service providers can't tie you into replacement schemes with the contract.
Still, a guy can dream.
Meta will eat itself
I wish the future of cell phones was more like the past, just smaller. You know, a phone that's just a phone but fits in my pocket comfortably. Why do they make me feel like I'm asking for too much?
Developers: We can use your help.
Things I would want from a mobile device:
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.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
Why is everybody so negative about the designs. Guess what, designers create based on form. Engineers create based on function. An end product is a meld of the two. If the designers only designed a cell phone that was the same shape and form as an old rotary phone, the engineers would design the electronics to go inside, and we'd all have phones bigger than the old bag phones of the 80s.
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
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
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.
The beads are not silly; they are the marketer's dream! Imagine the recurring revenue the phone operators get from selling more of the beads for people who gave them all away. A phone company could also lock customers in, with using a proprietary format for these beads. It could also serve as a differentiator for companies. I wish I could come up with something like those beads, patent the idea and then develop it further for a large wireless company.
Most people will say they only want a phone to call. However there are plenty of people out there that want more then just to call.
Imagine you are a system administrator. Won't it be nice to be able to ssh into your server the moment you get a warning? That way you could perhaps solve the problem faster, from where you are, without the need to actually go to your portable. Unless you a such a geek that you don't have any moment you walk around without a portable (and network access)
Some people like to have the camera. Some people like to send messages. So what you will get is a combination and variety of systems where you can select what you want.
Not everybody has the same Linux distro, or the same services running on his system, so why should this be any different with your cellphone. Buy what you need. Do not buy what others tell you what you need.
I use SUSE and I don't run KDE or Gnome. If you don't like the camera on your phone and yet you do like all the rest, then don't take pictures. Do you really want just to phone? Then just buy the cheapest (second hand) phone you can find. They are still available and can be bought.
Just as with Linux, it is all a matter of choice. Because YOU don't want it does not mean it is a bad choice.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
... and the odd SPV phone, have become increasingly bad at actually making a call.
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).
People spend so much time trying to develop tech for phones they don't stop to see if they should do it and ask people what they want. Why the hell would anyone want to put a chess set on thier phone? I mean seriously! Any why do people have to keep cramming more and more crap into cell phones? When I upgraded my phone last time, they kept trying to cell(haha) me one with an MP3 player. Also, not one of those phones looked like something I would even want to use. Lets pack more and more shit into phones and up the already high price! One feature that I do like on phones is the web feature(actually a useful non-bloated feature.) Games, MP3 player, and the such is rediculace for a phone.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
I once saw an interview with Prince Charles (about 5 years ago). He was congratulating two students on an award they received for a new design for a mobile phone. The conversation when like this...
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"
With hindsight, who's the smart one now...technnology moves ever forward, apparently there is nothing to stop things getting ever smaller except maybe cramming more and more functionaility into it, at which point, when does it stop being just a phone?
"If it's lost, it'll turn up. Things always do" "I love it when a plan comes together"
I suppose it's not good enough for the rest of the bus to be only be able to hear half the conversation.
Is that so freakin' hard?
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.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I think the designs are interesting. The idea behind a concept is to try to re-think things, or to improve things. Concept art and concept designs are all about stimulating ideas. Once in a while, a good idea comes along, and is actually implemented. Many things are assigned the round file of the past.
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?
A Passionate Independent Musician
more important is Apple. there's the RAZR iTunes phone but what about Apple? MacRumors.com has a page 2 link about a patent that Apple may have issued on an iPod video/iChat AV/cell phone. how will it get battery life? the batteries will shape the device.