By now, we all know what the different mobile phone form factors look like. There’s bar (or candybar), where the phone’s effectively one block. There’s flip, which can be either a traditional flip (where the hinge is at the bottom, a shape you barely ever see nowadays), or clamshell (where the hinge is at the top, like the Motorola RAZR).
Then there’s swivel phones, which have never been that popular, anyway.
And finally, of course, there’s slidephones, which encompasses both up down slidy phones like the Sony Ericsson Aino, and side sliders like the upcoming Nokia N900. And that, basically, is all mobile phones ever. It’s a somewhat sobering thought to realise that all mobile phones ever have fit into one of four different design categories (albeit with some sub-classification, like up-and-down/sideways sliders).
All that diversity, and yet only four chassis designs…
Well, according to GSMArena, there might soon be a fifth design out there, if Brazilian designer Fabrio Dabori has his way. Although, if I’m honest, the Hook concept isn’t really a new design at all, as far as I can tell. It’s simply a refinement of the existing flip and slide phones we currently see.
So what’s new about this design? What’s its unique hook (ha! See what I did there)? Well, put simply, the flippy or slidy part of the phone wouldn’t be a whole panel that flips or slides, but would be what looks like a little loop of metal or plastic, as you can see in the pic on this blog post. That little loopy bit would be the part that’s flipping or sliding open, and since it’s tiny (and since the mic is on the end of the hook, as Dabori calls it), it could potentially make for much more compact phones, which are still able to put the mic near enough your gob for you to have a proper, audible conversation.
So it’s quite clever, really, because of that simple concept, which basically makes a bar phone into something approaching a flip or slide phone, without actually being a flip or slide phone. The point of it, as far as I can see, is to give a standard bar phone an unlock mechanism similar to flip and slide phones, without having to be flip and slide phones.
I’d be lying if I said I can see much point to the Hook concept beyond that, but hey, it’s something new, and that’s always a good thing.
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