It always does my heart good to see patently mad ideas for mobile phones. It’s even better when that mad idea is, in fact, completely genius at the same time. Well, that’s case with a new concept mobile phone by Rune Larsen.
According to Softpedia, it has a touchscreen, with built-in, inflatable, balloon-y keys on it…
Mental, but genius.
It’s designed to answer the challenge of giving touchscreen mobile phones true tactile feedback, so you feel the keys beneath your fingers, something that current touchscreen phones like the Blackberry Storm, whilst they’re advanced, don’t do. Basically, what the concept shows us is a Nokia touchscreen mobile phone, with real, physical keys on the screen.
Eh? Physical keys on the screen? How can it possibly do that?
Well, the key to it all is water (or some other fluid), and a tiny little pump, the idea being that when you bring the numeric keyboard (that you see on most mobile phones) up on screen, for example, the corresponding bits of the screen fill up with liquid, inflate, and feel like raised keys.
See?
Mental.
That doesn’t stop it being brilliant, though. just imagine mobile phones coming out with that on. Imagine, say, if the Nokia 5800 had that. You could feel the keys under your fingertips, you could extend the idea to feel the control buttons of the music player, or the video player. You could even extend the idea to maybe make the screen mimic a photo on screen, so you get a kind of 3D photo.
No, actually, that last one could be a dodgy idea, depending on what photos you’re looking at…
It could be the idea that changes touchscreen mobile phones, something like a Nokia 5800 with an inflatable screen. Will it, though? Well, no, probably not, but it’s intriguing to think about what the immense possibilities could be.
Once you get your mind off 3D photos, that is…
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