It’s hard to look like a rugged adventurer or a super-tough pirate when you pull out a sleek smartphone and start texting. Designer Richard Clarkson created a phone that combines the modern functionality of a cell phone with the rugged, retro aesthetics of a rotary phone.

The Rotary Mechanical Smartphone features a modern touch screen on one side and a mechanical rotary dial on the other. The dial can be changed out rather like the lenses of a camera.

The longer the phone is carried around and used, the more attractive it will get: the overlying layer of paint will wear away to expose the electroplated copper body beneath.

According to the designer, this unusual marriage of modern and past technology is meant to add some personality and tangibility back into our everyday objects. There is more value, says Clarkson, in those objects with life and personality than in the generic pieces of technology carried by millions of other people.

The unique phone is at once minimalist and steampunk. It combines the best parts of modern and vintage technology to create something that can function the way we expect it to but keep touch with the solid mechanical feel of gadgets of years past.

The post Dial With Soul: Steampunk Phone Combines Past and Future first appeared on Gajitz.

To help visually impaired people make and receive phone calls, designer Andres Parada has completely rethought the way cell phones operate. This is his design, which he calls The Loop; it’s a two-piece mobile phone that incorporates several features which make dialing, answering and talking much easier for blind users. It doesn’t have a screen or a keypad like a conventional phone – those elements are replaced with features that make the phone simple to operate sight unseen.

The design was submitted in a contest for LG Electronics. It features a scroll for dialing phone numbers, which is a tactile rather than visual means of inputting information. The user simply turns the scroll wheel to select numbers 0-9 for the phone to dial. This feature would require the user to memorize the numbers they want to dial, so perhaps a future generation of the design could incorporate a speed dial feature.

One piece of the phone clips onto the user’s clothing or hangs around the neck on a strap; the other piece slips onto the user’s ear just like any other hands-free headset. The earpiece can be simply reconnected to the larger piece when the phone isn’t in use or when the user wants to terminate a call. The real beauty of this design is that when in use, it looks just like any other phone.

The post Love is Blind: Concept Cell Phone for the Visually Impaired first appeared on Gajitz.

Imagine being able to charge your phone with nothing more than a summer breeze or the rays of the sun. That’s the idea behind the Aeolus phone concept, an eco-friendly, low-energy cell phone made of renewable materials that lets you charge its battery without any reliance on grid electricity at all.

The onboard battery can be charged by a gentle breeze thanks to the small fan at the top of the phone’s body. For extra power the Aeolus can be strapped to a bike or a car window with a special tripod. When there’s no wind available and you’re simply out enjoying a nice day, the solar panels take over providing power to the battery.

The eco-friendly features don’t stop with the battery, however. The body of the phone is made with renewable materials, and the small single-color  LCD screen is energy-efficient and simple to conserve power.

The concept is from designer Cyrene Quiamco, who wanted to create an eco-friendly phone with an eco-chic appeal. The shape of the phone recalls a leaf or seed from nature, reinforcing its connection to the environment. The Aeolus is still in the concept phase of its design, but it’s an interesting direction to take phone design in for future generations.

The post Green Power: Wind and Solar Powered Cell Phone Concept first appeared on Gajitz.

Tablets seem to be the next big thing as far as computing involved; their extreme portability and impressive functionality bridge the gap between a cellular phone and a full-size computer. But as great as tablets are, they still lack an external keyboard – and as much as we love our mobile phones, they lack the screen real estate we need for certain tasks. So designers In-oh Yoo and Sun-woong Oh have taken a tablet device and a mobile phone, put them together in a dark room, and let them do their thing – the result was the Smartbook concept.

Their Smartbook would consist of two pieces: the main piece is a 7″ tablet, and the foldable second piece acts as a full-size keyboard. When you want to use the tablet for typing, you connect the two pieces, prop the tablet up like a monitor on the included pop-out stability piece and type away just like on a laptop or desktop computer. While the two pieces are connected, they can share power – so if one needs to be charged and the other has a full charge, the latter shares a charge with the former.

The two pieces also function together as a phone. The folding piece works as the handset and phone keypad when folded. But the actual hardware required for making and receiving phone calls is contained within the tablet piece, allowing the handset to be smaller and lighter. Of course, you would have to keep both pieces together to be able to use your phone, but since the tablet itself is so tiny, it seems a small price to pay for carrying all of that functionality around with you.

The post Get Smart! Super Convertible Two-Piece Computer Concept 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.