Mozilla Labs Presents Seabird Concept Phone

Several readers tipped news of a presentation on the Mozilla Labs blog about what they call Seabird, "a community-driven mobile phone concept." It's an imagining of what future phone tech could look like, using dual pico projectors and a Bluetooth/IR dongle to more easily interact with apps and web interfaces. "With mobile phone companies such as Samsung, LG and Motorola moving towards display applications for projectors, the technology remains open for expanding user interaction and input at the same time. The Seabird, on just a flat surface, enables netbook-quality interaction by working with the projector’s angular distortion to deliver interface, rather than content. With the benefit of a dock, each projector works independently and delivers laptop levels of efficiency."

Comments

Only a concept, will not be made

[Sonny Yatsen]

You see dozens of concept phones and they're always cool or super-capable in some way. But it's easy to create a cool concept when you don't have to consider real world limitations like battery life, cost, size limitations, etc. This phone concept is no different. It is packed with every phone fantasy the Mozilla community had. Of course it's going to be cool. But it's also telling that the Mozilla Labs people also have no intent for actually making one.

Re:Only a concept, will not be made

[JustinOpinion]

Yes, it's only a concept phone, and Mozilla has no plans to make it. Yes, it's easy to make technology super-awesome when you only have to deal in concepts, and not engineering.

But are you implying that this makes concept designs useless? Personally, I love them. The point is to show all the many-splendid things that could be possible if more advanced technology were available. Which makes sense to do, since technology continually advances. A concept design does many things: it gets people excited about possibilities, it gives product designers/engineers ideas about what to try next. Perhaps most importantly, it lets us all ruminate about, and discuss, design choices long before major effort has been expended. This lets us pick out great ideas and shoot down bad ones.

For instance, I'm sure many Slashdotters had moments of "that will never work because of X" or "that would suck because of Y" while watching the video. These criticisms can be helpful, as a concept design is refined to bring it closer to what a real-world device would have to do. And conversely many of us I'm sure had ideas like "That's awesome! If it could that, I bet I could hack it to do Z!" Many things we now use, and take for granted (touchscreen mobile phones among them) were ridiculous concept-designs at one time.

All I'm saying is that rather than just being "this is not and never will be a real device... lame" we should be discussing what is right or wrong about this particular design. We should be dreaming about future technology... because we are part of the process of making that technology come to be!

Re:How much are the bulbs?

[Sonny Yatsen]

LED lamps for pico projectors are much smaller and cheaper (especially for projectors that only need a throw distance of about 4 inches like in this concept) than projector lamps.

It's kinda funny for a "phone"

[thewils]

That nowhere in the concept video do we see someone actually talking on the thing.