RIM Blackberry form factor fantasies
A lot of the things that go on in the R&D labs of major handset makers do not usually make it to the actual devices or are ever seen by a wider public.
But some bits of what they are up to might be found in the patent applications that company files. And today it’s time to look at what the researchers from RIM are up to.
Some time in early 2007, while RIM employees were contemplating the impact iPhone will have on their business and devising the strategies to take on consumer markets, RIM R&D labs were having a field day drawing up a new form factors future Blackberries could sport.
Then they decided to put all of them into a single patent app, that now, two years later, is available for everyone to view. The concepts in the application range from smart and mundane, that can actually make it into your next Blackberry, to pretty exotic and stupid that will not see the light of day.
But enough of the talk, and let’s look some pictures. Starting from some, more or less, realistic designs.
Full touch screen device in a closed mode, that can be easily used for typing with a single hand on a narrow full or semi-QWERTY slide-out keyboard. Why not? It could be made to look just like any other Blackberry, the form factor and all the parts are pretty familiar and this one could find it’s own buyer.
Other designs are much more strange, like this dual mode phone with rotating screen:
It has the usual phone mode, rotate the screen 90 degrees and you get qwerty keyboard, rotate it 90 degrees more and you get the game controls.
Or these sliders:
And then we get to things even more exotic, like this cross between Motorola Aura and Nokia 6810:
This one, with a screen swiveling for no good reason:
Or this strange contraption with wings:
If you liked the post, you might find these interesting too:
- What’s next for your Blackberry
- The new kind of HTC Slider
- Nokia is thinking about it’s own Sidekick
- Slanting Cradles Coming to Samsung Phones and Media Players
- Sony Ericsson’s bracelet phone
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