Back in March, we covered an HTC Tube concept design, which is meant to integrate all of your devices using a removable cartridge that can transfer between the phone and tablet. Now Antoine Brieux, the designer, has added a keyboard which plugs into the tablet and creates a notebook, possibly inspired by the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer?
Is Samsung planning to enter the portable gaming market? And if so, should they? Here is an interesting concept by designer Dumary Joseph. It is called "Consolr HD3 by Samsung" (ummm, the name needs a bit of work), and has some crazy features, and according to Yanko Design is "a fanboi’s pipe dream about the ultimate gaming machine". After all, the best concepts are those that go past what we can currently accomplish. Check out all the details after the cut.
My first thought upon gazing on this concept design was a resounding "wtf", in a good way. Chengyuan Wei put together this little gadget that takes the ancient art of Origami and telephones and puts them into the same thing. How can this be? It's all because of the magic of technology.
We have laptops, we have netbooks, we have tablets, we have smartphones. But here is something different-ish. The Lifebook X2 concept folds into quarters, and then fits in a nifty little case that might just take me back to my flute-playing days.
If you've ever had a bunch of cheap USB flash drives that you've tossed around and abused, and perhaps cursed at for not having enough capacity due to you're data hoarding, then this concept design called the Collector USB Flash Drive will have you drooling. The Collector lets you custom configure as well as expand the memory capacity of your USB stick via the swapping of microSD cards. You may never have to delete anything off your USB stick again.
German designer Volker Hübner developed this tablet he calls the m • pad to cater specifically to the needs of designers and developers. It combines the functionality of a 15.6" OLED display. It also includes full multi-touch functionality married with a pressure sensitive stylus. Looking at the pictures from Yanko also suggest that this tablet should have a wide range of USB, Ethernet, firewire and whatever else available for connection external keyboards or mice for a more traditional computing experience.
Huawei looked to Sweden for inspiration on their new phone. They partnered up with the Claesson Koivisto Rune studio and produced this phone they call the Folded Leaf. It's a device that's meant to perform only the most basic cellular functions, the calling functions and SMS/MMS messaging. It strips out all of the high speed data functions that we smartphone jockeys are used to having and provides a handset that's meant to be comfortable for direct chatting without all of the extra bells and whistles.
When my son was born, and his vibrating bouncy seat started eating through AA batteries like jelly beans, I bought rechargeable batteries. But I found them kind of a pain. They didn't always charge back up very well, and it took a long time to charge them. Therefore, the battery charger is now in a drawer, and while we still go through AAs like crazy for all those electronic toys, I just buy regular batteries. But if this concept design comes to light, I might just switch back. Continuance is a battery with a USB port right in the side.
A group of college students have designed a traffic intersection that harnesses the power of vibrations from passing cars and pedestrian’s footsteps. The designers, Ian Jaye, Jovan Popovic, and Patrick Houin based the design on piezoelectricity, which converts vibrations and movement into electricity. We don’t see the use of piezoelectricity very much nowadays but the technology has been around for 100 years.
Moving forward into the 21st century is going to take some significant changes in the way we build our cities, both here in the US, and worldwide. eVolo is an architecture and design journal focused on the sustainable designs that are going to drive this whole century. They've been running a skyscraper design competition since 2006. They recently released the results of this year's competition. French architects took home the first and second place prizes. Atelier CMJN's team Julien Combes and Gaël Brulé took home the first place prize for their LO2P. This huge circular structure features biogas producing greenhouses, massive air filtration, and will be built-from-recycled-cars. Yoann Mescam, Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, and Xavier Schirr-Bonnans won the second place for their ingenious Flat Tower dome design. Yheu-Shen Chua from the United Kingdom took home the bronze for his re-imagined Hoover Dam.
Gorilla Glass is a common component in today's smartphones and tablets. If you have an iPhone 4 or one of Samsung's Galaxy S you're already enjoying the benefits of Corning's scratch and impact resistant glass. Corning has been working in glass and ceramics materials since 1851. They recently released this short video showcasing dozens of conceptual future uses for various types of electronically integrated glass panels. Corning's vision for the future of these multifunction panels features everything from hand-held touch reactive displays (modeled after the iPhone) to built in architectural display panels in everything from the bathroom mirror to kitchen counters to the entire dash of your car.
A design concept for Sony called PS Squared created by industrial designer Hirotaka Matsui, takes on a sleek and angular form. The device looks to be a small-sized tablet featuring a slide out QWERTY keyboard with raised buttons, a thin LCD screen, and PlayStation style D-pad buttons. The design was used in a video by Freescale Semiconductors to illustrate the future possibilities of smart mobile devices and how they can be integrated into all facets of our daily lives.