Meet Tomorrow's Mobile Phones

Old Ma Bell would hardly recognize these futuristic upstarts. By Brian Nadel

Contributing Author, Computerworld |

This version of this story appeared in the print edition of Computerworld. To read an extended version with accompanying photos of the mobile devices, click here.

The cookie-cutter approach to designing mobile phones could disappear in the next few years as designers go more than daring and more personal.

"All phones today exercise the basics well," says Shiv Bakhshi, an analyst at research firm IDC. "Merely that won't be enough in the future."

We asked a dozen designers and industry leaders to predict how mobile phones volition modify and to guess when the technology behind the new concepts will be bachelor.

Here are some concept phones, which, similar concept cars, are meant to demonstrate new ideas, non serve every bit prototypes of actual soonhoped-for-released devices.

Nokia Corp.'due south Morph is made of flexible materials that mimic the suppleness of spider's silk. It is designed to, well, morph betwixt what looks similar a traditional mobile telephone and a bracelet. "Using nanotechnology, the phone tin can change its personality to go whatsoever is nigh suitable for the job at hand," says Tapani Ryhanen, head of strategic research at the Nokia Research Centre in Ruoholahti, Finland.

The phone's electronics are expected to exist then small that they'll be invisible to the naked eye. This volition let designers make the phone transparent, Ryhanen says.

The Morph could also help you live more healthfully, says Nokia. An array of microscopic sensors could mensurate ecology hazards, such as carbon dioxide levels, or sense a diabetic's blood-sugar balance.

  • Engineering timeline: Seven to xv years

Created by Massimo Marrazzo of Turin, Italy-based blueprint firm Biodomotica, the Handphone has a microphone shaped similar a ring that slips on the stop of your pinky. The speaker is on another ring that slips on your thumb, and a circular phone controller and radio sit on the dorsum of your hand, held on by rubberband string.

Anyone who has ever motioned toward his oral fissure and ear with outstretched pinky and thumb to imitate making a phone call will know how to use Handphone. "The gesture is natural for people," says Marrazzo.

By definition, Handphone is not hands-free, but dialing, picking up and hanging upwards tin can be done with voice-activated controls.

  • Engineering timeline: Available at present

The P-Per is a thin device that looks like ii iPhones glued together. "It has a [touch] screen on each of its two sides," says Karole Ye of independent design firm Chocolate Bureau, in Shenzhen, Red china. "Mobile phone and messaging are on one, and a camera on the other."

  • Technology timeline: 3 or four years

Istanbul, Turkey-based designer Emir Rifat Isik's Packet phone is a foldable device that'due south about a centimeter thick and only v centimeters (well-nigh 2 inches) foursquare when it'south folded up.

"The thought was to put all the possible functions in the smallest surface area and brand them easy to use," says Isik.

If you fold open the top and bottom squares, the Packet looks like a traditional flip phone with a speaker and screen at the top, a microphone at the bottom and a dial pad in the middle.

If you lot desire to type an e-mail or surf the Web, you lot fold open the two sides to create a cross-shaped smart telephone. There'south a split keyboard at the sides, a arrow at the middle and a screen at the tiptop. "All interaction will be by touching the screens," says Isik.

  • Applied science timeline: A couple of years

James Scott, a researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge in England, is developing a phone with force sensors embedded at corners and so that hand actions like stretching, squeezing and bending can be used as commands. For instance, you could plow the phone on and off past squeezing or pulling it, or advance a Spider web folio by twisting the device.

One of the advantages of this technology is that it saves space because there's no need for button buttons, Scott says. That leaves more room for the screen.

Technology timeline: A decade, if the enquiry pans out

How would you like a phone that doesn't run out of power -- or at least can run much longer than electric current phones without being recharged?

Ricardo Baiao of Lisbon, Portugal, who works for Cincinnati-based DesignerID, is taking an interesting approach to developing such a device. His Atlas Kinetic concept phone will draw ability from the motions the user makes while walking, running or even sitting down.

Like the self-winding watches of the 1960s, it has built-in weights, rotors and springs that generate power whenever it'south shaken or moved. That power runs a generator that charges the battery.

A number of other creative approaches to powering phones are also emerging. For case, Apple recently received a patent for a unique solar-powered phone. The device'southward screen would generate power with invisible photovoltaic layers that would gather the lord's day'south light -- or a room'south artificial lighting.

  • Applied science timeline: Unknown

The designs of the phones of tomorrow are limited but past the imaginations of today'due south developers, who are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to put together the necessary software and hardware. "Big improvements in phone technology are coming," IDC'southward Bakhshi says. "What you tin imagine today will be possible on a cell phone tomorrow."

Nadel is a freelance author based near New York and is the one-time editor in chief of Mobile Computing & Communications magazine.

Copyright © 2008 IDG Communications, Inc.