Tuesday, February 16, 2010

What If You Could Wear Your Smartphone Like A Bracelet?

Using the Waveface banner, Asustek (a Taiwanese manufacturer) has been playing around with some more radical design ideas, including a sophisticated wrist-top computer, a laptop that folds like a newspaper and a TV that works with gesture commands. (Behold the jargon-filled demo video.)

The watch-like device, the Waveface Ultra, is made out of a bendable display that can connect to the Internet, make phone calls and do a fair amount of data-crunching. In short, it’s a bracelet that acts like a smartphone.

The device is definitely still in the concept phase. But futuristic as it may seem, some contacts at Asustek assure me that an incarnation of the Waveface Ultra is actually working in the company’s labs.

Asus is hardly the first company to kick around the idea of bendable displays or wristwatch computers (remember Microsoft’s ill-fated Spot watch?). But its ideas are interesting because of what they portend for displays. All three products hinge on a lightweight, flexible display material with built-in computing smarts (you'll have to read the full article to read about the other two. )

Most people have already given up wearing watches because their phones tell them the time. Would you start wearing watches again if it could make phone calls? It's not a totally new thing. Just google "wrist phone" and you'll get a bunch of prototypes. The innovation here is the bendable display.

Great, more products in a world that is already over-consuming far beyond their means.

1 comment:

  1. I wouldn't wear this thing if all it did was make phone calls and tell the time - maybe if it was much more integrated with other objects, like idk cars, home lighting, etc. it would be really interesting... I agree, though, I think it's too soon for something like this. It's a really interesting idea to explore and test out, but in today's market it might not fit in just yet.

    ReplyDelete