I love concept phones, me. It’s always nice to see new technology being judiciously fiddled about with, especially when it’s technology that could be best described as “absolutely barking mental”. So, imagine my joy when I saw the Fuse, a concept phone from Synaptics, on the pages of Engadget. It’s not the touchscreen that excites me about it. It’s not even the fact it’s got a second touchpad on the back of the phone. No, it’s the fact it has pressure sensors built in.
Yes, folks, what we have here is a touchscreen phone that you partly interact with by squeezing it in your hand.
Genius. This blog post’s gonna be a minefield of double entendres, then…
As you’ll see in the badly rotoscoped demo video of it, that I’ll show you in a minute, you can actually squidge the phone, to get it to do… er, something. I get the distinct feeling that the whole thing is very definitely a work in progress, and I’ve not actually worked out precisely what squidging the phone does (other than making you look slightly seedy). Basically, the whole concept is to make one-handed interaction with your phone a more natural thing.
I’ll be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t of thought squeezing something to interact with it was particularly natural. Well, not a phone, anyway. Other things, maybe. Things we don’t talk about in polite company. Well, alright, granted, I probably would talk about them in polite company, but I quite like this job, so I’ll refrain from talking about them, here.
Ahem. Anyway. Crashing on. It’s not just about what I like to call the squidge-sensor, as the Fuse has also got things like a 3 way accelerometer, and a touchpad on the back. So, essentially, it’s a phone you interact with by squeezing it, tickling it, and waving it about.
Er, yes, I lasted a full two sentences, there, before my mind went back into the gutter. Y’know what, let’s just play the badly rotoscoped demo video:
See? Pretty novel, ain’t it? I’d be intrigued to see how some kind of technology like that would work in something like the HTC HD2. Imagine that, a smartphone that doubles as a stress ball. Just don’t try it on any current generation phones. They’ll not squidge. They may explode, though, and take your hand with them.
But anyway, here’s to the day when we interact with our phones by squeezing and… tickling… them…
Sorry, I’m going to have to go for a lie-down…
More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!