Future Phones Dazzle With Design
Concept devices go where most product designers fear to tread. They are dream gadgets that hint at possibilities beyond what current technology can support — or what current fashion can accept.
And that’s just why we like them. They may be fantasies, but concept designs point at a future that today’s designers aspire towards.
Some interesting new concept phones made an appearance this week at CEATEC, the Japanese equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show. These included a chameleon-like phone that could change its skin depending on its surroundings, a phone whose casing is made of wood and a phone with a flexible screen that can assume different configurations (shown above).
A major source of the concept phones this year has been Fujitsu, which ran a mobile-phone–design contest. But other companies such as NTT DoCoMo and KDDI also offered their futuristic phone ideas.
Of course, these phones aren’t real. Some of them aren’t even in the prototype stage. Yet they are interesting because they provide a glimpse of what lies ahead — even if it’s still only on paper.
Chamelephone
Designer Hiroyuki Tabuchi created this concept with the idea that the mobile phone’s body can mimic and take on the texture of the surface that it is placed on. It’s a neat idea, but there’s no word on how that might be possible. Current material science doesn’t support this, so it would have to be done with some kind of display technology, like e-ink or OLED. As pretty as the concepts look, we won’t count on seeing these phones for a few years — at least.
Video: Toshiba’s Latest Fuel Cell Prototype Gadgets Charge in Seconds [Fuel Cells]
At Japan’s CEATEC show, Toshiba and KDDI are demonstrating a modified Toshiba T002 phone that’s powered by a direct-methanol fuel cell (DMFC) and Li-Ion battery. More advanced than previous prototypes, it runs for 320 hours on a squirt of methanol.
DMFCs produce electricity from a reaction of methanol, water, and air—the only by-products are a small amount of water vapor and carbon dioxide. Japanese wireless carrier, KDDI, has combined the fuel cell with a Lithium Ion battery to better handle the phone’s spikes in power demand.
This combination gives the prototype phone about 320 hours of power. That’s around 3 days longer than an equivalent handset. And instead of taking an hour or so to recharge, a few squirts of methanol only takes seconds. Right now the prototype is thicker than we demand of today’s phones, but the two companies hope the technology will eventually make it into portable gadgets like phones and media players.
Of course, Toshiba promised to start selling a DMFC battery charger by September, and there’s still no sign of it. Good to see they’re making inroads, though. It’s pretty interesting tech. [PC World and DVICE]
Posted: October 8th, 2009
at 8:10am by Danny Allen
Topics: Fuel Cells, KDDI, KDDI Toshiba Fuel Cell CEATEC, T002, Toshiba T002, ceatec, japan, toshiba, video
iida Ply and Prismoid phones strut their stuff at CEATEC (video)
While Fujitsu’s design entrants already boggled our minds here at CEATEC, KDDI au is looking to take things one step further by actually shipping a pair of decidedly futuristic handsets in Japan. Just months after the iida sub-brand was formally launched, the Ply and Prismoid are making their debuts on the show floor. The latter sports a 2.7-inch primary display, a 0.6-inch OLED sub-display, a microSD expansion slot and a design to die for; the former packs a 3.2 megapixel camera, 1seg TV tuner and a 3-inch panel. Have a look at the gallery below (and video past the break) if you’re yearning to see just how lovely a dumbphone can be, and trust us when we say you’ve only yourself to blame if you carelessly let this opportunity pass you by.
Gallery: iida Ply and Prismoid hands-on
Continue reading iida Ply and Prismoid phones strut their stuff at CEATEC (video)
Filed under: Cellphones
iida Ply and Prismoid phones strut their stuff at CEATEC (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Toshiba makes those yet-to-be-commercialized mini fuel cells smaller
Fuel cells, those electrochemical conversion devices, which are supposed to make the lives of gadget freaks easier, are still a hot topic in the alternative energy sector even though the technology hasn’t penetrated the mass market yet. Toshiba, for example, has been experimenting with fuel cells for quite some time now. And the company has now announced the development of a fuel-cell based cell phone that’s just 22mm thick.
The main achievement here is that this prototype is about 50% thinner than Toshiba’s previous one (which you see in the picture), marking another step towards commercialization in the future. The phone runs on methanol and doesn’t need to be charged.
This new prototype features a fuel cell that can be replaced with conventional lithium ion rechargeable batteries when needed (the earlier model ran on a non-detachable fuel cell). It can be filled with 3.5ml of methanol, which is enough for 320 hours of standby.
Toshiba has worked together with KDDI, Japan’s second biggest mobile phone carrier, in the development of the prototype. KDDI has already said it’s not yet ready to really sell fuel-cell-powered cell phone to end consumers, but this could change very soon. The companies already said they intend to push down the prototype phone’s thickness to 20mm or less, about the same as cell phones that are on the market right now.
Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]
