Have ye ever seen those headsets that don’t actually have a speaker built into ‘em? The way they work, right, is by using tech based around the idea of bone conduction, and now, KDDI and Kyocera have put the same tech in an actual speaker-less phone…
Yup, that there is a phone without a speaker in it. So, unlike something like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, for example (or, let’s be honest, every single phone on the market, ever), you can jab the phone against your head, in the sort of general area of where your ear is, and still hear the call. So, how does that work, then?
Well, like I said, it works on bone conduction, but maybe I’d best explain what bone conduction actually is, right? Basically, instead of having a speaker to pump sound waves into your ear, ye get a little vibrating doobrie, that sits against your head, and sends vibrations directly into your bones. Those bones send the vibration straight into your inner ear, and you can hear the sound, without any kind of ‘speaker’ being involved, at all. So, why might they be working on phones with this tech?
Well, consider this: on the Wikipedia page for bone conduction, one of the uses is in some types of hearing aid (‘cos it only works with some kinds of hearing loss… specifically ones where the inner ear is still functional, it’s the external bits that are smurfed). So, if this phone works by bone conduction, it means that some deaf people will be able to hear phone calls again. And that is win.
There’s no word on when this tech will actually make it into the mass market (the phone itself comes across as a kind of proof of concept, to me), but here’s hoping it’s sooner rather than later!
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