Microsoft slider smartphone with detachable accessories/remotes
By Staska on 22 Sep 11A mobile phone with various attachable and detachable accessories is not something very new.
It’s an interesting idea that many tried. We’ve seen Modu mini-phone with “jackets”, LG Expo handset with the attachable projector and NTT Docomo’s separable phone. And we’ve seen even more interesting stuff in Palm’s R&D department.
Alas, none of them became a successful commercial product yet.
Now it’s time for Microsoft’s R&D department to try something new. A slider phone with multiple interchangeable accessories:
It looks like your usual slider, but the sliding keyboard part is detachable and can be replaced with gaming keypad, second display, additional battery and other things.
What’s more – those same accessories can be operated independently, in a detached mode. For example, acting as a second phone, gaming stick, or remote control, to operate your smartphone while it streams games and videos to an attached TV set.
There are many reasons why such combined devices, even when they look great on paper, do not find many interested customers. And Microsoft is not getting into phone hardware making business again anytime soon. So the chances for this kind of slider to become a device you can buy, are pretty slim.
But if Microsoft decides to provide a reference design for such slider to its hardware partners and then adds an accessory support to Windows Phone OS… Who knows, someone may build something interesting with this.
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