View Full Version : Those lovely concept phones
Jason Dunn
06-21-2002, 07:15 PM
Concept hardware designs are always so cool - whether it's a new car that will never see the light of day, or the cell phone pictured below that just might, I personally find it thrilling when designers shed the weight of current limitations and simply <i>design something wonderful</i>. This design is so brilliant, yet so obvious. How do you maximize screen space on a portable device? Hide the input mechanism. Especially on a phone, you might not need to use the input that often. Everyone is different, but I receive more calls than I make.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/conceptphone.jpg" /><br /><br />Thanks to Bobby for sending us this photo!
Jonathan1
06-21-2002, 07:49 PM
8O *blinks at the screen a few seconds* HOLY $#($!!! That thing looks like its right out of the Matrix!!!! And totally BAD***!!!!! Where can I give up my first born for that thing? Sony Direct? Do they take Fedex?
isrjt
06-21-2002, 08:23 PM
It is becoming more and more obvious that sony erricson will set the stardard for cool, and a lot of other words that you would edit out.
That photo is of a concept phone developed by Sony Ericsson quite some time ago. That photo is from a show in Singapore that happened late last year. Officially they said it was not a prototype of anything that was going to be developed. Purely a concept device.
It does bear an uncanny resemblance to the soon to be released Nokia 7650, though:
http://mobile.burn.com/reviews.jsp?Id=35
The closest thing Sony Ericsson has is the upcoming P800:
http://mobile.burn.com/news.jsp?Id=8
Neat stuff.
JMountford
06-22-2002, 02:09 AM
All I know is dang, that phone is kick ass!
I just wish Sony Ericson would make CDMA/PCS phones cause damn that would be cool.
st63z
06-22-2002, 02:27 AM
Ericsson may not have wanted to do CDMA2000, but I thought Sony Ericsson IS coming out with such phones?
Yea, S-E phones are nice, but I dread when we get to the smartphone stage -- I just know S-E will (and only will) support Sony's Memory Stick (Duo?) cards, ugh :(
Right you are. The new P800 has a Memory Stick Duo card slot.
http://mobile.burn.com/news.jsp?Id=53
This was just announced a couple of days ago. Ugh.
An SD card would have been nicer, by a long shot.
krisbrown
06-22-2002, 10:46 AM
I thought the 7650 was really cool until I saw that pic, it looks very staid now, and the p800 looks very dated allready, when are they gonna learn that people buy phones for their looks just as much as the features.
Somewhere in every company there must be a 100yr old conservative who says " too flash, can you do it in brown?"
krisbrown
06-22-2002, 10:47 AM
I thought the 7650 was really cool until I saw that pic, it looks very staid now, and the p800 looks very dated allready, when are they gonna learn that people buy phones for their looks just as much as the features.
Somewhere in every company there must be a 100yr old conservative who says " too flash, can you do it in brown?"
thadrool
06-23-2002, 04:28 AM
Right you are. The new P800 has a Memory Stick Duo card slot.
http://mobile.burn.com/news.jsp?Id=53
This was just announced a couple of days ago. Ugh.
An SD card would have been nicer, by a long shot.
What's the big deal? Memory Sticks work just as well as SD cards and they have Sony's full backing. I don't understand all the "ughs" with MemSticks. Samsung, Acer, HP all have Memory Stick-capable products and Sandisk and Lexar also manufacture them. It's far from a Betamax repeat.
Jason Dunn
06-23-2002, 06:42 AM
What's the big deal? Memory Sticks work just as well as SD cards and they have Sony's full backing. I don't understand all the "ughs" with MemSticks. Samsung, Acer, HP all have Memory Stick-capable products and Sandisk and Lexar also manufacture them. It's far from a Betamax repeat.
It's exactly the same thing as Betamax, only this time Sony learned its lesson and they're dug in far deeper. The memory "standard" they have offers no advantages over other formats, except at the time CF was on the market they wanted to create long and slender audio players - and the physical form-factor of CF wasn't condusive to this....so they came up with the memory stick.
I'll never buy a Sony product as long as they continue to only support memory sticks (despite how much I like their design and product quality).
The big deal is that there are a million devices already on the market supporting an open standard, MMC/SD.
There are very few non-sony products that support Memory Stick, let alone the new Memory Stick Duo format.
Why should I have to buy more memory cards just because I want to use a sony product?
It is why I have a Palm handheld instead of a Sony, even though the current Sony handhelds are otherwise superior. My m505 uses SD, my 9210 uses SD, my iPAQ uses SD, I even have an SD digital camera.
The reasons for having to move from Compact Flash are obvious. CF is too large for many applications, even though it is otherwise a great choice. Nobody needed the memory stick. It reaks of the PS/2 from IBM in the 80's.
kettle
06-24-2002, 06:14 AM
I feel that memory has become so inexpensive buying different types of media is relatively painless. I'm just glad that most hardware manufacturers have finally taken our need for expandability into account.
Andrew Duffy
06-24-2002, 09:52 AM
I hate to nit-pick but Betamax had a lot of advantages over VHS, the main one being its superiour quality. The tapes were pretty short though.
I don't care if the cards only cost $50. I'd rather not have to buy extras. Or in this case, buy brand new ones since I don't have any.
At least the memory stick cards have come down in price, but Due is an entirely new memory stick format. Old cards will not function in the new Duo devices. I have no idea what the duo cards will cost.
It just doesn't make sense. There is no need for memory stick Duo. It is basically MMC/SD in size and memory density, and both have the ability to have non-memory devices in the format.
The issue is that MMC/SD has been around for a long time and there are a lot of cheap cards and current devices. MStick DUO is brand new and offers nothing new.
Jason Dunn
06-24-2002, 03:37 PM
I feel that memory has become so inexpensive buying different types of media is relatively painless. I'm just glad that most hardware manufacturers have finally taken our need for expandability into account.
It's not so much the cost as it is device interoperability. I can take a CF card and use it in both my digital cameras, my Pocket PC, or a USB card reader. I can do the same thing with SD or MultiMediaCards with a CF adaptor. Sony Memory stick? Worthless to me. The question is, what advantages does it offer over CF, MultiMediaCard or SD?
Jason Dunn
06-24-2002, 03:48 PM
I hate to nit-pick but Betamax had a lot of advantages over VHS, the main one being its superiour quality. The tapes were pretty short though.
Yes, not the best example I picked. :-) Betamax was technically superior, but Sony lost that battle for a lot of reasons (VHS was far cheaper). Read the book SONY for a great explanation of the whole Betamax issue - it's why Sony later bought up music and movie studios. They felt that if they controlled the "software" (the media content) they could have held onto the Betamax format. Sony doesn't give up easily, so this was a tremendous blow to them.
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