In real life, this would work if the phone – called the Window Phone – would have wireless access to the Web and gather information from trusted weather forecasting sites.

Assuming that this is not a problem, the Windows Phone would not only let you know if it’s sunny or rainy, but it would also change its home screen according to the weather.

Needles to say, the Windows Phone has a large touchscreen – in fact, it looks like it’s just a big, transparent touchscreen:

Since the phone doesn’t feature any kind of hardware keys, users will have to handwrite phone numbers and messages whenever they want to communicate. Too bad we’re not going to see a real device of this kind too soon.

Via Yanko Desing

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The MID was designed by Petr Kubik, and, according to its portfolio page, the concept is the “winner of Intel competition mobile internet device.” 

And while this doesn’t mean we’re going to see it built anytime soon, Intel might give it a try and power it with one of its CPUs.

Anyway, let’s see what’s so special about this.

At first sight, the device looks like a somewhat regular touchscreen phone:

But the cool thing about it is that it features a folding display which can be open to “produce” a surface of 210 x 210 millimeters. This should allow you to browse the Web, view videos and edit documents like you’d do on a netbook or laptop. On top of that, the device should also include an anti-theft mechanism.

Well, now let’s hope we’ll see MIDs like these in the next few years

Via Yanko Design

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This time, the concept is called Ondo and it comes from Pilotfish, a renowned industrial design firm.

The Ondo phone combines “form-sensitive flexible materials” with advanced music editing capabilities, allowing you to modify sounds just by bending and twisting the device.

Its OLED touchscreen display is made from three removable parts, called sticks. These can be clipped onto various musical instruments in order to record live sound.

After the record session is through, you can send music via MMS.

Although the Ondo phone is only a concept for the moment, Pilotfish says the technology needed for it to be manufactured will be available in the “near future”. Well, we’re waiting.

Via Press release (PDF link)

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At first sight, the device looks like a portable media player, but it’s actually a full-touchscreen phone that should have 3G, GPS and lots of advanced music features. 

Designed by Jose Tomas DeLuna, the KRE8 would come with three pre-loaded modes: Instrument Mode, Record Mode and Mix Mode. These can be activated and controlled via the large touchscreen display.

One of the coolest things about the Motorola KRE8 is that you can literally split it in two pieces. After doing so, each piece uses its own accelerometer for detecting the gestures you make. This way, you can use the device as an instrument simulator – guitar, violin or drums – and simply start creating music.

The music you make can be recorder in MIDI format and shared via the handset’s wireless connection. 

Of course, this is only in theory, as I’m not sure how it would all work if KRE8 had been a real music phone. 

Here’s a video presentation with the concept, although the device looks oddly big in it:

Via Yanko Design

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The Mozilla phone that we see here is a concept designed by Billy May. It’s created by mixing the old BlackBerry 7130 with an Optimus keyboard, thus it’s not exactly the pretties handset around.

However, it is, definitely, an interesting concept. In the creator’s vision, the Mozilla phone should come with a set of OLED keys, which can change their appearance and usability according to your needs. For example, now you have a SureType QWERTY keyboard, and the next minute you have shortcut keys for the websites and web-services you use the most.   

So it’s kind of like an open-source phone that can be adjusted by users themselves.

The question is: would Mozilla really want to be involved in developing such a handset?

Source: Mozphone via Yanko Design

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What we have here is a “Disposable Pre-paid mobile phone concept” by Shirley A. Roberts, which features a 2-column 14-key keypad and a small screen to handle text. It looks very futuristic, but the screen there kind of looks like something taken straight out of a Point-of-Sales terminal in your local supermarket.

When rolled up, this phone can be worn on the wrist. And it can also be used as a regular stick-design handset, with matching headphones.

It may not have much in terms of features, and won’t be besting the LG-GD910 in any scoreboard, but it certainly looks way better. When LG (or any other phone manufacturer, for that matter) produces downsized but sexed up watch phones like this one, maybe then I’ll consider buying.

Via Yanko Design

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Designed by Mac Funamizu, who’s also behind that Nokia Aeon-like concept, Lupa is a phone that would surely attract everyone’s eye if ever built in reality.

Its form factor reminds us of the uber-expensive Motorola Aura, although I think Lupa looks better, mainly thanks to its transparent swivel display.

The concept has a big navigation wheel, similar to the one we all know from Apple’s sixth generation iPod Classic.

Apart from these details, there’s not much info regarding the features that Lupa should offer.

It’s worth mentioning that “lupa” means loupe in some languages (Spanish, for example), this actually being the word on which the whole concept is based.

So what do you say, Apple guys? Could such a phone be a winner or a loser?   

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What we have here is a fan made mockup of what is supposedly called the iPhone Pro. It’s an enhanced and much improved version of the iPhone, featuring no less than a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, built-in gamepad, and dual cameras.

The front of the iPhone Pro doesn’t look much different than that of the iPhone 3G’s. But there’s an added front-facing camera that will allow for 3G video calls. The camera ’round the back has also been improved.

Needless to say, Apple won’t be producing this exact same device sometime in the near future. But in case they didn’t have any plans for a future iPhone model yet, this mockup is actually not that bad at all.

Planet Mat via Gizmodo

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The Natural Year phone, pictured below, is made almost entirely out of hay, aside from the screen, keys, and possibly the battery. As time progresses, the phone’s body will break down, literally, until nothing is left of it but the plastic and other non-hay pieces.

The designer envisions the Natural Year phone to be able to withstand daily decay for up to two years, until all that’s left of the phone are its non-grassy parts.

I can see spies and transients in other countries having a great use of this, but I think the biggest obstacle to this product’s success, if it ever exists, would be goats, horses, and other plant eating animals. But then again, if a user gets tempted enough to smoke it, well, you get the idea.

Via Yanko Design

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But what if it’s actually possible for such a device to be built and to function as a normal, every-day phone?

Reporting about the latest achievement of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Cellular News says that a group of scientists have developed a chip almost completely transparent.

The chip uses a new TRRAM (transparent resistive random access memory) technology that’s presented by the American Institute of Physics in the latest issue of Applied Physics Letters.

Although it has a high level of transparency, the new chip is similar to CMOS chips, thus it can store non-volatile memory and it can be used in manufacturing various devices – cell phones included.

The Korean Institute is working on combining flexible materials with the new TRRAM technology, which means that a phone like Nokia Morph could indeed be built.

Nokia Morph

“It is a new milestone of transparent electronic systems. By integrating TRRAM device with other transparent electronic components, we can create a total see-through embedded electronic system,” states Jung Won Seo, one of the Korean researchers.

TRRAM devices might be available in 3 or 4 years, so I guess we should expect really awesome products to come our way. 

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Basically, the Handgrip iPhone charger is some sort of golf club that magically charges itself with each and every swing made with it. And so the creator says, “Swing this many times and you get some electricity to charge your iPhone.”

That in itself is already a great feature, but there’s (supposed to be) more. “This time, its motion sensor sends your form data to your iPhone so that you can see your own golf swing animated.” And that’s the story behind the photo you see below where there’s a guy swinging on the iPhone’s screen.

Not too shabby, but I still think I’d prefer the old way of charging my iPhone. Using this might rejuvenate my handset, but in the end, I’ll be the one exhausted because of all the swinging. Still, interesting concept.

Via Yanko Design

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This interesting iPhone case is actually just a concept, made by designer Bruno Fosi, and the idea behind it is to help the blind or visually impaired to use and enjoy their sophisticated touchscreen smartphone from Apple.

Working in coordination with its own iPhone app, this concept iPhone case should allow special accessibility functions such as text-to-speech features, and a tactile QWERTY keyboard that’s not really a QWERTY.

And just like the iPhone, this iPhone case is dead simple. The icons and all other “keys” are carved out in bas-relief fashion, ensuring tactile feedback. Unfortunately, if any evil-doers ever think of snatching a like-equipped iPhone from the hand of a blind man using it, it doesn’t appear to have any security features whatsoever.

Yanko Design via Textually

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Let’s face it, the T-Mobile G1 might be a landmark device, considering it’s the very first Android-powered smartphone ever produced, but its design could use a little more sexing up.

So while those handsome folks from HTC are lazily letting their weekend pass by, here’s a concept that could help them in designing version two of what would have otherwise been known as the HTC Dream:

The Skinny phone by designer David Turpin pictured here features both a large touchscreen display that accepts user-input, as well as a full, sideways-sliding QWERTY keyboard. Sure, this design has been used in many other smartphones before, but none of all those real-world devices look as slim and sleek as this one. Especially not the T-Mobile G1.

If you look at it while closed, you’ll also notice that it kind of looks like an overgrown iPod Touch. Which technically could make it a concept for the iPhone, too.

Well, I think a design like this really belongs in the future of smartphones. It’s up to the smartphone makers to use it on any of their upcoming models, now.

Via Yanko Design

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Apparently, it actually has nothing to do with eclipses at all (just like the music-centric Sanyo Katana Eclipse), and instead, it takes its name from the situation that inspired it. Quite the opposite of the Eclipse Intuit phone concept we showed you back in June, which got its name because it gets power from the sun, by eclipsing it and catching its rays.

Aside from seeming to have a mild case of identity crisis, and not knowing whether it belongs to the past or future, the Eclipse phone doesn’t seem to be good for anything other than calling or texting. Yeah, it has a slick design, but that’s about it. Maybe it would be best put where its designer, Brian Ho, meant for it to be then: the home. That way, it would be useful for bragging to house guests, and out of sight of those who might think of it as a butter knife.

Via Yanko Design

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The new phone doesn’t have a name yet, but it surely has a distinctive design. When you see it for the first time, the handset looks to be some kind of slider. But it’s not.

It’s a weird candybar that’s thicker in its lower half, where the large keypad is. The lower half would also host all the device’s components, this adding to its usability.

The phone’s display is said to be a “futuristic transparent” one, and it seems large enough to support a resolution bigger than the classic QVGA one that Nokia accustomed us to.    

Heikki Juvonen’s concept handset reminded me of Batman’s Batmobile, and I can actually see Batman liking the phone :)

There are no features listed for this Nokia, but its creator says it should come with a fingerprint scanner, in order to “allow actions for each fingertip”

You can view more of Heikki Juvonen’s designs on his website, at this PDF link.

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But we’re not going to talk about AT&T’s phones right now, although I’m sure many of its subscribers would wish to have at least one of the devices presented below.

The Pantech Design Community, comprised of 20 college students, has showcased four new concept phones that Pantech might, someday, build.

The first concept is called Coralliform Water. Obviously inspired by the sea and its life, the phone is a slider that somehow looks like a budding flower, when closed. No tech specs were given, but the Coralliform Water seems to have a touchscreen display and a camera.

This phone would especially look good in a lady’s hands and, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind having one. Not at all. Here it is:

Easter Moai, the second new Pantech concept, is designed to express the “multifaceted nature of human beings”. It has a “wave” touchscreen LCD, a touch key, a dome key and lots of other keys on its sides, put there to increase the phone’s functionality.

The Easter Moai can also be attached to some sort of support, of unknown purpose:

Recy_Q is a full-touch phone that also has a sliding QWERTY keyboard. the device features touch keys that are embedded into its metal frame, for an easier control over its User Interface. Recyclable material should be used for the case and the keypad.

I’m not sure about how those tiny “wings” of it would feel in hand, but the phone surely looks good:

Softy Lofty, the fourth new Pantech concept, is the weirdest of them all. I can’t figure out where the display of this phone is. Anyway, the handset is designed “to offer as much visual and emotional comfort as possible” and to emit a vague light when re-charged:

So, apart from this last concept, the other three ones look like they could soon be in stores, probably in South Korea first. But this is all up to Pantech and its manufacturing plans.

Via Telecoms Korea

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The phone itself seems to be of a regular candybar design. But what’s different is that its display will be splattered with E-ink, and as such all the text, images, and probably other graphics will be rendered in plain black and white.

The outer casing looks like it’s made from solid metal, and even has a couple of hardware buttons seen here on its right side. While it’s definitely not the most creative way to approach cellphone concept making, making this usable enough to be a mainstream product will surely be a challenge for anyone who dares to make it.

Via Yanko Design

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Designed by a certain Mac Funamizu, this particular phone concept features a dynamic screen that works with different technologies including tactile feedback on a touchscreen and e-ink. And aside from a standard alphanumeric keypad, it also has a semi-standard Apple keyboard for users to type on whenever the need arises.

It’s certainly a nice concept, and I’m sure designers at both Nokia and Apple would be proud, but if you want to know what those white things in the last photo are, I don’t know. Maybe clouds?

Via Yanko Design

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Though its design kind of resembles an oversized microSD card, make no mistake about it: it’s supposed to be a phone. A touchscreen phone at that, and offers user input via its wide touchscreen display.

According to the maker of this concept, called the Nokia Liquid Phone, users should be able to type and manipulate things on the screen without having to actually look at it. How? Magic, of course! By “using a small pump to fill a substrate beneath the screen that gives our fingers something to feel and press.”

As you can see here, its buttons look as if they have ballooned up from beneath the screen for a user to type on. And that’s exactly what happens every time either of the two on-screen keyboards are brought up (both the alphanumeric and QWERTY keyboard). The plastic outer layer of the screen floats just a little bit upward to form little buttons that we can actually type on, instead of type at.

It’s hard to say when this kind of phone will begin hitting store shelves, or if it will even become possible in the near future. But if it doesn’t, well, it’s got a design that’s quite worthy of being used in one of Nokia’s next touchscreen phones anyway.

Via Yanko Design

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But as with all good things, the GreenHeart concept deserves a second look, as it has the potential to change the way handset manufacturers assemble their products to help the environment for many years to come.

Our friends at Mobile Cowboys have managed to snag a Sony Ericsson GreenHeart concept prototype phone, and have shown it in a few live photos. It looks just like most low-end Sony Ericsson handsets, and in fact it would be hard to tell that this was actually made of recycled materials if you didn’t know from the start.

Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart phone will have a bio-plastic housing, recycled plastic keypad, web-based manual and will come in matching environment-friendly packaging. It will also feature a so-called zero charger with 3.5mW standby power, which means it uses up less power than its current-generation counter parts.

It might still be a long time till we finally see phones derived from this concept but its day will surely come. Kudos to Sony Ericsson for taking a step in the right direction.

Mobile Cowboys Via BGR

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The company has just announced it is working on a concept that someday will materialize into GreenHeart phones. A GreenHeart phone should have a bio-plastic housing, a keypad made out of recycled plastic, and, apparently, it should consume only 3.5 mW (milliwatts) when in stand-by.

Sony Ericsson also mentions “HTML based e-manuals”, an Ecomate educational game and a green packaging to come with the future GreenHeart phones.

Unfortunately, there is no image with the GreenHeart concept for the moment, but SE said it showed it to “few select partners” that received it with great interest. Moreover, the manufacturer says it will present the concept to consumers, allowing them to point out the features they’d like such a phone to include. 

Well, this all sounds good, doesn’t it? Too bad SE doesn’t give any exact date about when the GreenPhone concept will be fully unveiled. 

Apart from talking about the GreenHearth phones, Sony Ericsson has also announced the launch of its “environmental warranty” program. This means the company has set up its own collecting points, where users can recycle their old mobile phones.   

For the moment, there are more than 500 collection points, in the US, Mexico, India, China, Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand. By the beginning of 2009, Sony Ericsson plans to establish collection points in all the countries where it conducts operations.  

Via Sony Ericsson

• Sony Ericsson’s GreenHeart concept phone in the wild
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Nokia N-XT is yet another concept, but this one seems quite realistic. And, interestingly enough, it was created out of disappointment. Of what? you might ask.

Well, the designer of N-XT, Chris from Symbian Freak, thinks that Nokia doesn’t actually know what gadget freaks really want from a new Nseries smartphone. So he came up with the N-XT. Which, he says, is made public as an open source idea that the Finnish manufacturer can use for creating an upcoming Nseries multimedia computer.

This handset should come as the ultimate Nseries. It is designed to incorporate a display that can both slide and swivel, turning the N-XT into a device that might be called a smart-video-photo-projector-phone.

The capabilities that Nokia N-XT should have could make it not only the best Nokia ever, but also one of the best mobile devices, regardless of brand. And to convince you of this, here are the main features of the concept:

• 4.1 inch full-touch display with a Wide-VGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and 16 million colors
• Symbian S60 5th Edition Touch interface
• 8-way D-pad
• quad-band WCDMA connectivity
• 8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens, optical zoom, auto focus, face detection, xenon flash & dual-LED flash and video recording (WVGA at 30fps)
• Dedicated graphics processor unit (GPU)
• Accelerometer
• A-GPS and compass
• Built-in DLP 720p projector
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
• Audio & Video players
• FM radio and FM transmitter
• 3.5mm audio jack
• 24GB of internal memory plus microSDHC support
• 1,800 mAh battery

Quite impressive, I’d say. The thing is: will we get to see the N-XT in reality? We might, if the Nokia bosses take a peek at it and decide to turn it into one of the next Nseries smartphones.

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Unlike other concept phones with rounded edge design, it’s a rectangular shaped phone with a combination of touch screen equipped with traditional numeric keypad by Nokia.

From the look at images, its is expected that phone will feature 5.0 MP Camera, SD Card Slot along with in vogue touchscreen display. Bluetooth, Video and Audio player are among other features that could be figured out.

via – concept phones

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The countdown has begun for a new smartphone that should soon kill off the iPhone, Nokia N96, Samsung Innov8 and any other new smartphone coming into a market.

It’s called The 01 Phone, and it’s launching within a month.

And if you don’t believe that it will be a stunner – just take a look at the specs: 5.0-megapixel camera, 3G internet, and a whopping 32GB of storage … the slide-out part of the handset actually conceals a laser keyboard, which projects a full qwerty onto the flat surface below … full touch-screen… stunning multimedia capabilities, etc;

And, of course, the looks:

Katherine at T3 accidentally stumbled on the new promotional site for the device and brought the news to us.

The phone looks real cool and I’m postponing my new mobile phone purchases until I can get my hands on this one… Or not.

It just sounds too good to be true. And it is.

A little DNS look-up shows that the domain for the 01  phone is registered to Future Publishing, the publisher of T3 magazine itself.

Well, looks like a really nice concept for a future phone. And a cool prank. Seems to be a bit late for April fools, but makes for a nice weekend reading anyway.

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Each layer of this phone will be responsible for various needs of yours like: mini digital projector, game controller, photo printer, and of course a widescreen cell phone. In a nutshell, this phone will bring you office in your pocket.

It is a daring attempt to think of a concept phone like above but one should not get excited about the phone showing up sooner or later on the FCC site. They will first need to invent the technology which will be required to manufacture such phones as including all features in one device will require techniques which we still don’t posses.

Price of this phone isn’t known yet considering that it is just a concept.

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The Maple phone looks like an ordinary candybar at first glance, but of course nothing about this phone is “ordinary” at all.

Measuring 4.5 x 10.4 x 9.8 cm, the Maple phone can slide to reveal a LCD screen that goes hand in hand with the capacitive touch body. It should be able to provide users with basic cellphone technology, as well as proof of inner nature-friendliness.

The Maple phone may not look like it’s one of the most durable phones ever, but it sure gives you that “I’m in love with Mother Nature” look more than anything.

Via CameraPhonesPlaza

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You simply have to turn the dials towards certain directions to initiate phone calls, answer incoming ones or hang up on the other party. It’s got it’s own dock, where you’ll be able to find the “phonebook” and will also most probably be used for charging it.

The designer of this mobile phone concept had this to say about it:

You turn the dial of every element to the desired cipher. If you entered the number you turn the first segment “to phone” (green LED). If you want to hang up the call you turn the first segment to “hang up” (red LED). The phone works without buttons and without a display and based on the old dial phones.

It surely is an interesting phone concept, and when you add the fact that it also has a nice vibrating feature, it will surely be a hit with users, especially the ladies.

Via Yanko Design

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The screen is hidden discreetly within the body of the phone itself, and readily swings out whenever needed. It shows only the most important information, such as if a call is coming in, as you can see here pictured.

It also appears to have a user-removable battery, although it’s hard to imagine something as small and minimalist as this would require any battery changing even after at least a few years.

Believe it or not, though, this is stuff of the future (it’s just a concept). So yeah, don’t count on it showing up on the FCC site any time soon.

Via JAMP Blog

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The Eclipse Intuit phone is a concept by designer Eddie Goh, and it carries a 5 megapixel camera, a wide touchscreen display, slide-out touch keyboard, and it also has built-in image and video editing features.

What’s really notable about this phone concept, though, is that it will have a casing that’s covered in a chemically based thin solar skin so that it can charge the battery whenever it gets exposed to ANY kind of light. That’s right, it doesn’t only use the sun, but practically any kind of light you can imagine.

Now we already have both the technology for harnessing solar power, as well as highly advanced touchscreen phones, but I think we’re still a long way from that “ANY kind of light” battery charging thing. But I won’t be surprised if in a few years, something like this finally comes out.

Via Yanko Design

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But a simple design by Matthias Pinkert might hold the answer to this predicament. His Old / New Phone concept offers a clamshell-type flip phone designed like those old phone receivers of yesteryear. Yes, just like the ones you’d expect to find in phone booths. The only difference is it only features four keys and as earlier hinted, a folding design.

It’s four keys allow for direct calling and one-touch dialing, and it also boasts a GPS tracking feature inside its unassuming shell.

The wire you see here isn’t connected to a modem, because you see, this is a lanyard to keep you from misplacing this phone while you party with other elderly persons. It drags the phone down in terms of style (because there seems to be no way to remove it) but it makes up for it with the added security and portability.

Via Yanko Design

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The Egg mobile phone will be targeted for stylish handset users who prefer to eat breakfast in bed, and don’t need the latest and greatest in gadgetry – just the basics, if you will. However, that’s not to say that the Egg will not have high-end features, like an advanced input system and support for heavy multimedia.

Other than its eye-catching slim design, the Egg will have a flexi true color display for tactile touchscreen feedback (yes it has a touchscreen). Bluetooth and WiFi will be built-in alongside USB connectivity for easy file transfers and Web surfing, while a 3.2 megapixel camera and up to 4GB of memory takes care of your music, videos, and photos.

The rounded body will be soft, and surrounded by an illuminated red strip that just vies for your attention. Given the popularity of touchscreen handsets nowadays, the Egg mobile phone will surely have its place in the future if it ever gets constructed in real life.

Via Yanko Design

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And when some design house announces the competition for a communication device of the future, you know that something interesting is bound to come out from it.

As was the case with Tancher design award. Here are the devices that took top three places:

A Magic Mirror by Timofej Gorlov:

While for my tech inclined taste this wasn’t a favorite, Magic Mirror took the first place in competition.

All the internal electronics of the device are hidden inside a glass sphere – the magic crystal, and behind the two displays there. The image on the displays can come from internal electronics or fed from the six internal cameras, to render all the insides invisible. The screen can also be made to project a “magnifying glass effect.

Through cameras and internal electronics, the device is capable of lip reading, thus recognizing your verbal commands and enhancing it’s “magic” appearance. And the whole thing is:

Animated realistic changes between chronometer, magnifying glass, mirror, compass, news box, phone, media player, TV create the feeling of the following: if it is not a magic, it’s a little wonder. For example, the change to the mode of operation “ON” is dark background, the point of light at the center of opening aperture (diaphragm); then you can see the whole indicator panel of chronometer. And even the small shadow gets a move on with second hand.

The second place went to Light Flash by Peter Zsolt Koren:

The front side of the device is covered by semitransparent, scratch resistant plastic, with a full sized touchscreen beneath it. All the usual gimmicks like numeric keypad, keyboard, menu controls can be done through this touchscreen.

However, at the front of the device there’s also projector and cameras that are also able to capture the hand movement:

The projector projects the pictures on the wall or on a paper or on a whiteboard. The projector and the camera are active together.The camera recognize the projected picture and create the active areas on it. This data get from for example the web code like at the normal computer.When you show something on the projected picture the camera recognize your finger motion and activate it. The projected picture become an active interface!

You can also use the main touchscreen like a trackpad to control projected display.

On the other side of the device is a high quality speaker.

And the third place in design competition went to “Tancher – Transformer” by Maxim Shkinder:

It’s a multifunctional device, that can act as a mobile telephone, photo/video recorder, multimedia player, multimedia projector and has support for holographoc image projection and 3-D scanner. A particular configuration of the communicator parts determines certain interface of a particular function.

Hologram area that is shown together with its ports on the picture may be used for the 3-D scanner function. User may pass an X-object whose sizes does not exceed the size of the area through the scanner area and 3-D image of the object will be captured in the memory of the communicator or may be transformed in a 2-D format.An original function of “Video-Company” is an ideal way to feel closer to your relatives, sweetheart or lead a business with your partners. For instance camera in an active mode may transfer video information in real time to your friend who is ready to guide you to a certain street or help you find a particular object in a city. The communicator installed on the office desk helps to organize a business video conference or make a presentation to your colleagues.

To read more about these devices head over to the competition site.

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Within a week of the report release we get Nokia Evolve 3110, a somewhat updated version of 3110 classic, with a “green” angle.

Since then the leadership of green initiatives was taken up by Nokia research division.

First we’ve got Nokia Eco Sensor concept, then came Nokia Remade recyclable phone.

All these initiatives sum-up into not a much more then a PR vaporware, but the Greenpeace report was also mainly a PR issue for Nokia. So let the Finnish “green” PR offensive continue. We are getting some pretty nice pictures of possible future phone designs, at least.

And today we are treated with one more interesting “green” phone concept – Nokia Morph

The main idea behind Nokia Morph concept phone is the use of nanotechnology based flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces. These materials should enable Nokia to produce a mobile device that “…might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes”.

Different shaped devices you see in the picture, is actually the same one mobile handset, that transforms itself into the concrete shape according to the user needs.

The concept was developed by Nokia research center in cooperation with Cambridge University and is on display at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

• Nokia Eco Sensor Phone concept
• Pilotfish Ondo – a music editing phone concept
• New TRRAM technology could bring transparent, flexible phones like Nokia Morph
• Foldable/ rollable phone from Motorola
• LG has solar powered eco-friendly phone too

Well today I have a treat for you. A concept fashion phone called Edge.

It was design by Cris Owens an is dubbed as:

“A cell phone that uses touch and light technology for a fashion oriented design”

And here’s how it will look with display in active mode.

The glass keypad slides out whenever needed. It houses a LED light source for keypad edge and character illumination .

Be sure to visit designers site, there’s more pictures illustrating the whole design process, and even some cool flash movies showing how the phone works.

Via Yanko Design

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Last week it was their first “environment friendly” Nokia 3110 Evolve marketing initiative. This week Nokia came up with a futuristic Nokia Eco Sensor Concept:

Nokia Eco Sensor concept includes a wearable sensor unit that will house a number of optional sensors to monitor environment, health and local weather conditions, a dedicated mobile phone and a set of dedicated mobile software applications and services.

All the devices will be made using the latest environment friendly technologies and materials like printed electronics, bio-materials and reclaimed materials. The carrying strap made from solar cells will power the sensor unit and all the devices will “talk” to each other via low power near field radio technologies.

And that concludes Nokia’s “environmental” plug for this week. I wonder what the next week will bring us

Nokia Research

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• Sony Ericsson GreenHeart phones coming on June 4

Now, Nokia fans at French Spanish discussion board ToDoSymbian came up with another even more interesting Nokia N96 N-Gage gaming phone concept, that takes into account the latest developments in both S60 and N-Gage software/service platforms:

Nokia N96 is a really interesting concept combining all the best features from full touchscreen phone, numeric keypad, QWERTY keyboard and portable gaming console into one cool gadget.

The specs for this Nokia N96 would be:

• Quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900) WCDMA 2100, HSDPA
• 6 mpx camera
• 3.2″ 16M color display
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
• full QWERTY keyboard and numeric keypad
• DMB TV, FM Radio
• 4 audio speakers
• built-in GPS
• full touchscreen with motion sensor and joystick navigation
• dimensions 102.5×56x17.6 mm
• weight: 115g

My beef current Nokia N96 is – why settle for what would be a lame 6 mpx camera, when we already know that 8 megapixel/optical zoom phone cameras will appear in high end mobile phones next year? Will we even have 6 megapixel cameras?

And where’s HSUPA and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA data transfer support that will be incorporated into mobile phones next year as well? Again. Another interesting concept. And this one a bit closer to the real model. At least in size.

And to see what  N96 looks like in live pictures and video, check out our Nokia N96 review.

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Sony Ericsson has also presented quite an intersting vision of where the converged mobile phone/computing/entertainment devices are heading within next five years. And they showed an interesting video of their vision too:

Yeah I know, I know. My head hurts too from all the shaking and moving images. I should have held the camera more steady.

I promise I’ll do better next time

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Samsung Art and Design Institute held a 10 week courses for design students in their Product Design Department, with the concept product/prototype exhibition at the end of it. Samsung BRIX is one of more impressive product concepts presented there:

Samsung BRIX is modular, full touchscreen multimedia mobile phone, where you can ad additional brick modules to the basic platform to expand it’s capabilities and user experience.

E.g. if the phone screen is too small to enjoy a movie, get more bricks to improve the screen real estate; need a better camera then is currently on the phone? Just plug-in expansion camera brick.

Even though Samsung BRIX is a just a concept phone by an outside designer team, Samsung itself has been exploring similar ideas and even has a patent to prove it.

Called “Mobile terminal having wide viewing function digital broadcasting” the patent application describes the possibility of plugging together 2 separate Samsung phones to expand available screen size for better media viewing experience.

Looks like a cool design direction and it would be interesting to see what new products it will spawn in the future.

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Well, you could get something really awful.

But if you are a talented enterprising designer, you can come up with the next generation Nokia 7480 fashion phone concept:

It’s hard to tell from the pictures how the dialing keypad for such Nokia phone will be implemented.

But otherwise it’s a really neat design concept, which would look really cool and might raise quite a few eyebrows if implemented in next gen Nokia 7480.

And who knows, it might even be an effective answer to the rumored iPhone Nano, that Apple keeps hinting about in it’s patent applications.

Source: 163.com

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So today we found you a new concept phone called BLANK, that is all about the looks:

According to its designer Chris Kujawski:

Utilizing a flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) touchscreen, BLANK is based on the principle that the device that you carry with you most often should reflect your personality as much as the clothes you wear, car you drive or music you listen to. Since those may evolve from season to season, your phone needs to accommodate that. By providing you with a ‘blank slate’ in the form of the OLED touchscreen that wraps the entire front of the phone, you are free to express yourself in any number of ways visually by downloading static or even kinetic skins that make your phone come to life, just the way you want it to.

And here’s another take on blank:

Looks real nice and I can’t wait for someone to turn this concept into reality.

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Now Austrian designer Tobias Hornof has dreamed up the next generation of Nokia 8×00 luxury phone line:

As envisioned, Nokia 8900 should feature 16M color OLED display, 100M of internal memory, microSD card slot, 3 megapixel camera and MP3 player.

Looks like a very realistic specs for the luxury phone next year. And while design itself is not officially endorsed by Nokia, it looks really interesting and the phone along these lines might be a great upgrade for the already successful Nokia 8800 line.

Via Idnes.cz  and Inside-Handy.de

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But since it featured Asus logo quite prominently, we thought that this concept was ordered or endorsed by Asus.

Turns out this is not the case. Asus Aura is pure creation of Egy Studio. It was not approved and now is officially denied Asus.

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Only LG seems to have had something at least a little bit similar to iPhone with their LG Prada KE850 phone. Other vendors were left churning out the concept phones on YouTube.

And here’s another concept phone – Asus Aura, produced by Hungarian design company Egy Studio for Taiwanese vendor. It was clearly inspired by iPhone, although it has some interesting innovations addressing commonly mentioned shortcomings of Apple’s cellphone.

One of them is a movable navigation module with navigation buttons, another – a sliding QWERTY keyboard that should make text entry much easier.

Other features of Asus Aura include – 3,9″ touchscreen covering the whole surface of the phone, 2 megapixel camera, microSD memory card slot, GSM, UMTS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. All of this in a 6mm thick package.

Unfortunately Asus Aura is just a concept so far and will stay that way probably a few years.

With the dimensions of 97×49x6mm and total volume of 28 cc, Asus aura is several times smaller then what current HSDPA chipsets allow to be. But with Moore’s law and competition among communication chip makers in full swing, who knows? We might see it sooner.

Via Mobile Review

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