Let’s face it: Cell phones are disposable. Their lifespan is little more than a couple years, and even though there’s that ‘do not throw away’ icon on the back of most of them, they still end up in garbage bins. To help divert cell phone waste, a Dutch designer has created a unique concept phone.

Based in the Netherlands, designer Dave Hakkens created Phonebloks, an ideal concept that would give your phone a longer life cycle and near-complete customizability. Standard features like antennae, battery and storage are changeable pieces that can be switched out independent of the main frame. Resembling Legos, the individual features, rather than the entire phone, are replaceable.

Phonebloks focuses on the individual. If you’re into photography, for example, the camera ‘blok’ is upgradable, as is the battery for those who regularly deal with files and cloud systems. Each blok is like an app, serving a specific purpose that can be added or removed. The Angry Birds blok is still unavailable.

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Where technology is concerned, manufacturers are always trying to shrink device components so they can squeeze more functions into the device – but this Japanese phone may take down-sizing a little too far. The Phone Strap 2 is said to be the world’s smallest and lightest cell phone.

At a total height of just two inches, this phone truly is tinier than any functional cellular phone we’ve ever seen. It’s got a retractable antenna and can handle up to two hours of talk time on one charge. The Phone Strap 2 can also send and receive emails, provided they aren’t too long.

The phone is precisely the size of a box of Frisk mints, a wildly popular treat in Japan. The Phone Strap 2 is available in white, black and pink – all in shades that coordinate perfectly with colors of Frisk mint boxes.

The ridiculously tiny one-inch “ultra compact” display seems almost too small to even be a fun novelty. But where there’s a silly new gadget there’s a whole bunch of people who can’t wait to get their hands on it. They’ll have to be fast because Willcom, the phone’s manufacturer, only plans to sell 12,000 of these babies in Japan for around $380.

The post World’s Tiniest Mobile Phone Features Wee One-Inch Display first appeared on Gajitz.

If you could make your cell phone a permanent part of your body, would you? What if it meant giving up one of your natural limbs? Designer Bryan Cera created just such a phone: the Glove One. Fortunately, it does not require a permanent sacrifice of the hand, but it does make using that hand for anything but phone calls rather impossible.

Cera figured that most of us have at least one hand on our cell phones for such a large amount of time each day that they become almost like appendages in their own right. According to him, the functionality of our devices becomes dependent on the dysfunctionality of the user as we develop a stronger reliance on those devices.

Although it wasn’t meant to be a real, marketed cell phone, the Glove One does really work. In the video above, Cera uses it to call his personal phone. Even though the Glove One was meant as a commentary on our addiction to our phones, it isn’t hard to imagine this becoming a real product within the next decade or so…which is a rather sad reflection of just how much we are willing to give up in favor of the next gadget trend.

The post A Handy Thought: Will Gadgets Become Part of Our Bodies? first appeared on Gajitz.

Providing a rich communication experience for everyone is a luxury that technology allows us. Design student Suhyun Kim wants to ensure that deaf people are able to have phone conversations with friends and family without relying on relay services, and her “Visual Sound” phone concept relies on technology that is already available and in use. Simply put, the phone would convert the deaf user’s typed words into spoken words on the other end. Then, when the person on the other end speaks into their phone, the Visual Sound phone converts their words into text.

The concept works in much the same way as a relay call, but without the third party listening in and typing/talking. This idea would afford a greater degree of privacy in phone conversations, but perhaps more importantly it would allow deaf individuals to place phone calls without a TTY machine or special phone service. Although many hearing impaired people choose to simply use text messaging these days, this isn’t always an option – especially when calling a business for information or communicating with a family member who isn’t comfortable with texting. This concept would allow a far greater amount of freedom for hearing impaired individuals, letting just about anyone have phone conversations whenever and wherever they please.

The post Say and See: Phone for Deaf Converts Spoken Word to Text first appeared on Gajitz.

Carrying on the trend of awesome transparent gadgets, Columbian designer Juan Carlos Garzon has concocted a phone design for Nokia that adds some transparency to all of your conversations.  The touch interface gives a simple and clear view of which buttons you’re mashing, while all of the electronics bits are stored below in the white enclosure.

When not in use, the touch screen fades away, leaving only the white bottom and a glass-like top section that doesn’t give much of a clue about its true identity as a phone. The clear top portion of the phone lights up from the inside, giving the display more power and making it easier to see what you’re doing, even in the dark.

Despite looking very compact, the bottom part also houses a 5 megapixel camera – making this phone comparable to many of the more conventional phone designs on the market currently. We think the clean, crisp design would be a winner with design junkies, though like all transparent gadgets it would be a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

The post Clearly Calling You: Transparent Nokia Cell Phone Concept first appeared on Gajitz.