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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.
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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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?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Please. I'm holding out for the artificial molar that allows perfect sound reproduction through bone conduction, and removes one of the last visual cues that distinguish me from a raving lunatic: a visible phone.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
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.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
Screw that, if this is what the future holds -- I'm going to enroll in whatever program they're in and design a cellphone that is also a baseball bat. That way, when future-people are talking on their annoying cellphone anal-beads or whatever, I can take out my cellphone and have the satisfaction of bludgeoning them to death.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
An industrial designer makes forms that follows function and is within the possibilities of engineering. The design you are talking about is the same as art and SciFi-movie prop design. The things presented in the article are scifi-designs, which have very little base in reality... (i.e no account is taken for batteries or antennas.) And a phone with a larger antenna will have better reception, it follows from Maxwells equations. But the current market does rather accept so-so reception than an antenna. But you are right in part: The lower antenna performance can to some degree be compensated with a better network.