Mobile Phone News:

I’m a great lover of concept mobile phones, as should be readily apparent to anyone who reads this blog. I loves ‘em, and quite frankly, the more ludicrous the better. However… there are two flavours of ludicrous. First, there’s “this phone is completely daft” ludicrous; second, there’s “crikey, if they make this phone, it’ll change Earth’s orbit, it’s so good” ludicrous.

It’s safe to say that the new concept ‘01Phone’ falls very firmly into the second category.

A joint brainchild between gadget magazine T3 and design house The Alloy (whose concept phones I gushed about last year), this really is a mobile phone designed to fill the nation with the hollow, reverberating sound of people jaws hitting the floor. It could quite simply be, in other words, the single best mobile phone ever conceived by man.

Ah, but that’s an easy statement to make, so why is it so good?

Well, basically, mobile phones out there in the world do many different things, and give people a whole swathe of benefits. Mobile phones with top-end cameras, to give you perfect photos. Mobile phones with bags of memory and superb music players, so you can bin your old mp3 player. The internet. Sat-nav.

Well, the list goes on, but the idea posed by T3 is that no individual mobile phone has done everything perfectly, or given customers the perfect version of every single one of those benefits, in one phone (although I’d argue the HTC Touch HD comes close). So, they set out, with The Alloy, to rectify that, to make the perfect mobile phone… and the result is the 01Phone you see here.

And, oh dear god, is it stunning!

The looks are perfect, the features are incredible, and the feel of using it is better than any other mobile phones out there. Well, at least, it is if you believe T3, which, I hasten to add, I am inclined to do…

Imagine a combination between the Touch HD mentioned above, and the Sony Ericsson X1, and the iPhone, and the Blackberry Storm, that takes all the best bits of those mobile phones, makes them even better, and then adds in some new benefits that none of those phones have. So, the basics are two 5 megapixel cameras, front and back (yep, video calls will look as good as videos and photos from the main camera), a massive multitouch screen (with a multitouch stylus that look like a pair of sugar tongs and therefore rocks), 32Gb of built-in memory… all of those things are cool, but you could argue that they’ve been seen in other mobile phones before.

In which case, let’s look at the really cool stuff, the stuff that you just don’t see on any other mobile phones…

Mighty Morphin’ Power Keyboard

First up, the keyboard. As you can see, it’s a slide-out QWERTY affair, except it’s context sensitive, so whilst it is a proper keyboard with proper keys, different pictures or symbols are shown on the keyboard, depending on what feature of the mobile phone you’re using. So, camera controls for the camera, internet keys for the web browser, a choice of QWERTY or old school keypad mode for writing texts… Oh, and it changes colour, too, so you always know what mode the keyboard is in. That is bordering on impossibly awesome, and there are some pics, below, of it in action to show you just how frighteningly cool that idea is.

Wireless headphones hidden inside the phone

With 32Gb of memory built in, and what appear to be stereo speakers on the back of the 01Phone, it should be no surprise that it loves its music. So, how about if it includes wireless headphones that you stow away and store inside the phone itself? Which, presumably, will mean they get charged when the mobile phone does.

The word ‘genius’ comes to mind. And yes, there’s a piccie of that, below, as well.

Two mobile phones for the price of one

Ok, here we go. The coolest thing on the 01Phone, and in fact, the coolest thing I’ve seen on any mobile phones ever, is that black stripe on the back… because it’s not just a black stripe on the back; that, right there, is actually a second, miniaturised mobile phone that lives inside the big mobile phone! In effect, that means that you get two mobile phones instead of one; the hyper-turbo-nutter touchscreen phone for all the flashy, fancy, fun stuff, and a second, cut-down, mini-phone, to use as a simple phone on the go, while you keep the hyper-turbo-nutter shell in your pocket, or in your bag. Small, simple and discreet, that’s the ticket.

That. Is. Astonishing (although I will concede it’s very similar to the Modu concept of modular mobile phones).

Not only that, but you’re supposed to be able to wrap the mini-phone round your wrist, implying that it’s also got a bendy screen, which suggests e-paper (just like the Motorola F3), which means the battery on the mini-phone, when detached from the hyper-turbo-nutter shell, should last roughly, ooh, forever.

Here you go, as promised, some pictures of all that cool stuff:

So, the big question is… will the 01Phone ever get made, or is it just some kind of mad pipe-dream? Well, the problem with most concept mobile phones is that they never, ever see the light of day as real, over-the-counter products. Which is rather disappointing, and would be doubly so in this case. But the thing is… word on the street is that The Alloy are actually in the process of building a fully working prototype, taking it beyond the concept stage, and into the world of “oh blimey, this could actually happen now!”

That being the case, it’s entirely possible that one day soon, the world will see the 01Phone in the flesh. And if it does, then trust me, the world of mobile phones will never be the same again…

Don’t want to wait and see IF the 01Phone ever actually gets made? Grab one of the new breed of smartphones, like the HTC Touch HD, today!