If you don’t remember the Samsung Galaxy Aurora, well it was a concept made by Alexander Black and now the designer is back with a follow-up. The new model is called Aurora Prime and uses all the things that were not so good on the first device, now corrected and improved.
The pictures you’re seeing here have teaser value and the finalized smartphone will come on March 30th. Obviously feedback is welcome at this stage. The handset looks very much like a Galaxy S series member would look like and it’s very, very slim, plus it seems to have a cutout for a Home button. The Aurora Prime smartphone features an edge to edge display, that’s about 5 inches in diagonal, if you allow me to estimate.
No idea what the back looks like, but I’m guessing it’s black and it’s either made of plastic material or metal. I’m also guessing there’s a 13 megapixel camera on there, some powerful speakers and inside the device there’s 2 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage and maybe an 8 core CPU. Don’t be surprised if we end up with another Galaxy S5 concept!
We deal mostly with phone designs on our site, but sometimes prototypes are worth checking out as well, with the best example being the following shape-shifting handset. Designed and shown in action by Fabian Hemmert, the prototype was demoed during the TEDxBerlin show in 2009.
The handset is based on a weight-shifting technology, that alters the center of gravity of the unit and implements feedback-based navigation. The result is a shape-changing phone that allows the users to adjust its thickness by interacting with its four corners. One of the prototypes involves a heartbeat-like pulse, used to communicate information, also showing the device’s battery life.
There’s a video of the shape-shifting gizmo at the end of the article, if you’re curious.
What can we say about a concept phone that doesn’t have many details attached to it? We’re talking about Terrillo Walls’ new design, the Ta Dragon, pictured below… It’s a pretty mysterious device, a thin handset with a side mechanism that has to be slided in order to power the device. Is this mechanism practical?
Seung-Hwan Lee, a South Korean designer recently sent us his concept phone design, based on a steering wheel input mechanism. The device is pictured below and we have to say the idea is quite original, although some of you might think it’s borrowed from the iPod’s scroll wheel.
Other features of this concept include a wide LCD touchscreen display, a rotating circular wheel with functions like email, menu, camera and notes embedded in it. Side buttons are also incorporated into the device, each with features like Send, End, Clear and more.
The wheel mechanism will provide access to quick navigation, media playback and new ways of input. What do you think?
Dan Lewis recently sent us a mail, showing his concept phone, the Crestarola handset, pictured below. He claims that the device is a combo between an Android OS phone and a Palm OS one, although I think that this would make a pretty good Windows Mobile phone.
Its interface is very basic, although a bit old-fashioned, but the virtual keyboard is really original.
You can click on the image to view its larger version and we have to mention that the Crestarola concept phone packs a pretty big full touch display, a camera at the back and probably an important amount of memory and many connectivity options. What do you think about this phone design?
Talented designer Antoine Brieux has shown us his NAK concept phone before, but now there’s a new version available, dubbed the Screen. This “no design cellphone” comes with a special NAK screen, a virtual handset body and many possibilities of customization.
Users will personalize their phones as they please and there a couple of examples below, like the Rubber Stone, Silver Surf and Glass Soap designs. Technology won’t be compromised by design changes, so this supports the modular phone technology, if we can say so.
Why make things complicated with fancy design, when all we need are phone components and pure technology, while the design is decided by the NAK Screen? We’ll just swap components and designs as we please, with the main flaw of this idea being maybe the decay of companies like Sony Ericsson or Nokia, not allowing such much customization.
Reporting about the Fujitsu concept phones showcased at CEATEC 2009 hasn’t quite been a ball, specially since most of them were available online as mere pictures, so it’s up to us to speculate on their features and design. The list goes on, with the seventh concept, pictured below, a full touchscreen display handset.
The phone seems pretty normal, a touchscreen device with a pretty big screen, an on-screen numeric keypad and two strange segments on the upper and lower side. These two really made me curious and wonder what the deal with them was… Are they hinges of an unusual flip phone? Tiny camera sensors maybe? Projectors?
After showing us a teaser of his future project, Shane A. Bygrave introduces the Sony Ericsson G819 Compass concept phone, a pretty hot Android 2.0 handset. The device uses an ARM Cortex-A12 1GHz processor, a 3D graphics HW accelerator and a microSD card slot for cards of up to 32GB.
Sony Ericsson G819 measures 112 x 55 x 13mm, weighs 126 grams and feaures a 3.5 inch TFT touchscreen with a 360 x 640 pixels resolution. A-GPS and WiFi are also on board, together with Bluetooth, Google Maps, a modem feature, PictBridge, TV out, USB and Compass Assistance.
This phone also incorporates a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, BestPic, face detection, VGA 30 fps video recording, geotagging, image stabiliser, smile detection and touch capture. The Compass feature is demoed in one of the images below and it’ll help you get directions, no matter where you are.
After having a look at Liam Quinn’s very first concept phone, we realized that the designer is something special and now we get to see another one of Liam’s works. Dubbed the “triPhone”, this concept was named like this because it comes with a triangular speaker and a flash arrangement with the same shape. It all started off as an iPhone concept…
Liam claims that the new handset runs Windows Mobile 7 and comes with a multi touch interface, plus it features a 12.1 megapixel camera with dual LED or single Xenon flash. A 2MP cam is also present on the front side and it’s used for video calling, as for the rest of the specs of this phone, triPhone comes with a 4 inch widescreen multi touch OLED display, with very good contrast.
The phone’s battery life is very good and on the back side of the device you’ll find an angled OLED display, used to alert the user when incoming messages or calls arrive. There’s also a full QWERTY keyboard with a fingerprint scanner and Windows Media player button on board and even a game pad, as you can see in the picture above.
triPhone comes in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB versions and its camera uses features like smile shot, anti shake, mosaic, frames, fun effects, touch focus and more. Liam Quinn images that this device is created by Apple or maybe Sony Ericsson (Cybershot?) and you might want to know that it doesn’t use any external hard buttons and it only includes one port, in order to keep it thin.
What do you think about Liam’s latest concept? I say that the designer’s skills are improving.
Liam Quinn has shown us a very neat phone design a while back and now this concept phone has been finished, so it’s time to check it out again. Also, we get more details on the handset’s specifications. Liam mentions that the phone got a couple of exterior buttons (on/off/lock and camera) as a novelty and the flashes got tweaked.
This concept phone runs Android and comes with 2 full touchscreen displays, sliding buttons at the front and a camera at the back with dual LED and/or Xenon flash, plus concertina optical zoom. The sliding buttons we’ve mentioned can move independently or as one piece and the middle slider is able to change function depending on the app you’re using, or the mode of handset (movie, music etc).
Also, we learn that this device is modular, as it comes in more versions and parts can be mixed and matched from each other. For example, the basic no camera version of the phone can get a 12 megapixel camera upgrade with OLED display, by attaching the needed part on the back side.
The lower end version of Liam Quinn’s phone comes with a basic keyboard (non touch), that can be upgraded to a full touchscreen keyboard, if the user wants to. The basic handset packs 8GB of internal memory, but you can upgrade it to 60GB and even replace the battery, tweaking the device in many ways.
So, you’ll start off with a basic low end phone and keep buying parts till you get a very hot smartphone with a 12 megapixel camera and 60GB of memory… How cool is that? Looking forward to checking out new designs from Lian Quinn. What do you say about this first concept of the promising designer?
