Gallery: Bendy Nokia Phone Prototype and 8 Other Bizarro Cell Phone Concepts
Ian Jones01nokia-bendy-f
Today's smartphones all seem to share the same silhouette. You'll find a large, flat touchscreen on the front, and maybe a few buttons across the bottom. The form factor will be thin enough to fit in your pocket, and it might include a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Snooze. But it doesn't have to be that way, as futuristic cell phone concepts constantly remind us. At the Nokia World Conference in London -- the location where Nokia's Windows Phone handsets made their debut -- a new *flexible* handset was being demoed. It's called the [Nokia Kinetic Device](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/nokia-concept-kinetic-device_n_1035064.html?1319728487&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008) and, yes, the entire phone is being flexed in the photo above. The entire device is made of plastic, right down to the AMOLED display on the front. Rather than using swipes and pinches to navigate the UI, you would use bends and twists. To zoom into a page, you bend the phone so its center buckles towards you; zoom out by doing the opposite. A twisting action is used to scroll through photos or adjust the volume. Since it is all plastic, and all bendy, the prototype lacks a number of features that would allow it to be a true smartphone -- or even a cell phone, if we're being honest. The touchscreen isn't capacitive, there's no camera, no GPS and no actual phone functionality. We said it was a prototype, right? So it clearly has a way to go before it starts landing in consumer hands. Here's a collection of eight other concepts and protypes that push cell phone design to the limit.
02nokia-morph
The Nokia Kinetic Device isn't the first example of Nokia dabbling in flexible cellphone prototypes. The [Nokia Morph](http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/30-futuristic-phones-we-wish-were-real/) took that to the extreme with the ability to bend and morph into all sorts of shapes. The Morph was a "nanotechnology concept device" that fused art and science. It was even on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art in mid 2008. Nokia partnered with the University of Cambridge on some research projects that centered on nanotechnology. Nokia expected "[elements of the Morph](http://gizmodo.com/360260/nokia-morph-cellphone-rolls-up-stretches-cleans-itself)" (perhaps what we see in the Kinetic Device prototype?) within the "next seven years" of when the concept debuted. Doesn't the phone's green hue make it look squishy, like it's made of Jell-O or some sort of slime?
03easy-tile-cell-phone
The [Easy Tile Cell Phone concept](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/diy-tile-phone/) takes DIY just way too far. Touting benefits like it's "Easy to assemble!" and "Fun to slide the tiles around!", you might find yourself with half a phone once you start (inevitably) losing the pieces. The tiles actually act as a shell around an [S60](http://www.s60.com/life/thisiss60) cellphone. Using a printing service, you could print an image onto the tiles, and then turn the phone into one of those sliding tile puzzle games. But *why on earth* would anyone want to do that??
04nokia-sugar-phone
I've never come across a phone quite like this one. It's got a serious sweet tooth: It gobbles up soda, particularly Coca-Cola, for power. This super sweet cylindrical cellphone is a Daizi Zheng-designed [Nokia concept](http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/12/sugar-powered-phone-concept-robs-us-of-perfectly-good-coke/) from 2010. It's perfect if you've got a pantry full of Coke, and have just decided to kick the tooth decaying-habit Hopefully you have good aim as you're pouring syrupy sweet soda pop into this tubular design. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a seriously sticky cell phone (if your keyboard even works after being doused in the carbonated muck).
05philips-fluid-smartphone
The [Philips Fluid Smartphone](http://www.designbuzz.com/entry/philips-fluid-smartphone-with-flexible-oled-display/) concept looks like one of those [slap bracelets](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_bracelet) from the '80s and early '90s. It was conceptualized by a Brazilian designer named Dinard da Mata. It features a flexible OLED display and wraps around the wrist to transform into a fashionable accessory. Tres chic! Although I'm not sure how I'd feel about wearing something like a smartphone around my wrist, the idea does suggest a degree of convenience.
06project-seabird
[Project Seabird](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/seabird/), a concept out of Mozilla Labs, crams a ton of forward-looking features into a sleek, futuristic package. Created by industrial designer Billy May, it features dual pico projectors that can project a full-size display or virtual keyboard; a removable Bluetooth headset that moonlights as an IR pointer; wireless charging; and enough processing power for rendering 3-D images in real time. Unfortunately, the current state of projection technology is [a bit woeful](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/2011/10/celluon/). But that's OK, as that's what concepts are for -- looking toward the future, and imagining what eventually *could* be possible.
07htc1
Andrew Kim's [HTC1 concept](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/beautiful-concept-phone-for-htc-should-be-built/) is simplicity at its finest. Twin metallic end-pieces made of machined brass with a silver finish sandwich an inner slab of glass. There's a single button on the bottom metal slab, and a front-facing camera on the top one. There's a speaker housed in each end piece, allowing for stereo sound when you're playing music or video. That bottom metal block, as the picture shows, also swings out to form a kickstand. And, being a conceptual smartphone designed for HTC, it runs a tweaked version of HTC's Android Sense UI. All of this so far sounds pretty reasonable. Now, we dive into the, um, interesting: When the phone is charging, it turns on a UV lamp within the glass portion of the device in order to kill germs on the handset.
08kre8-2
What do you get when you cross an iPhone, a Tonium [Pacemaker](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/reviews/product/pacemaker_portable_dj) Portable DJ and a Nintendo Wiimote? This phone concept, apparently. It's called Kre8. The (somewhat) DJ-friendly design was developed by a student named Jose Tomas DeLuna. The phone is split into two halves, and each has a sensor and accelerometer. This allows it to be used in one of three modes that can be detected: Instrument Mode, Mix Mode and Record Mode. One of the Kre8's unique abilities is that you can handle both halves in your hands (like Wiimotes) to create beats on the go, tapping away at invisible drums that the sensors within turn into beats. You could even hold one piece in each hand, with one arm outstretched, and "play" a violin. Although the phone concept would be a bit tricky to use as a phone (since its screen is split in half, for starters), it's certainly interesting to think about.
09flip-phone
The [Flip Phone](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/01/flip-phone-yanko/) is double jointed, so it can fold itself into the shape of a triangular prism. It's got three super AMOLED screens, and can also be folded with one or two of the lightly curved displays stacked on top of one another for a more compact form. It's got a front-facing camera, and would theoretically run Android FroYo. And as for those joints, they are steel mesh links, so you wouldn't have to worry about the phone accidentally snapping into separate pieces. The morphability factor, which would allow you to say, read a magazine on all three screens laid flat, or type on a touchscreen keyboard with one of the screens up at a laptop-like 90-degree angle, brings to mind other mobile devices like [Sony's dual-screened S2 tablet](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/04/sony-enters-tablet-war-with-wedge-and-burrito-shaped-devices/) that actually exist. But, unlike any realistic counterparts, the Flip Phone can also act as a flower vase.
