Once upon a time eco-conscious individuals believed that solar power was the saving grace of gadgets. But now I present to you the future: Kyocera’s kinetic powered phone! Yes, that wonderful, superfantastic OLED technology is at it again, but this timeit isn’t simply making your thin high-def TV thinner, it’s making your cell phone of so sleek, portable, and all while taking it off the grid. So, how’s it work?
In it’s unused form this concept-phone would be folded up neatly in your pocket (about the size of your wallet).But when you want to start dialing simply unfold an a sleek, crisp OLED screen is there with a full QWERTY keyboard for your texting convienience. And just like those space memory-foam beds, the phone has ‘shape memory’; when folded the keys blend in with the design, but unfolded the phone recognizes that it’s time to bust out the keyboard. By using a soft semi-rigid polymer Kyocera was able to achieve a portable format that, when embeded with piezoelectric generators, it actually creates energy by being used! Finally, lending your new phone to your friends to show them how cool it is pays off at last. What’s more, you don’t have to rely on tha measly sun for your eco-energy.
The phone itself is still in the concept stages but some, or all, of the features could soon be incorporated in future designs. Read on for Kyocera’s description of the EOS:
“The concept EOS envisions a future where we have a more humanistic relationship with our phones. Appealing to our haptic senses, a soft, semi-rigid polymer skin surrounds a flexible OLED display. The metaphor of a ‘living’ skin was used for its notions of protection and constant evolution, providing a heightened user experience.
Shape memory allows keys to morph up from its surface when needed and fade away when not in use. The flexibility of the screen allows for greater adaptability of form and interaction – it maintains a compact shape (the size of a small wallet) for simple phone calls, and unfolds to reveal a large widescreen display. The device feeds off of our physical interaction with it, translating kinetic energy into an electric charge via an array of nano-scale piezoelectric generators. The more we interact with EOS, the more energy it creates – without using batteries.
Though the Kyocera future concepts are still in their early design stages, the design teams from San Diego and Bangalore are exploring many different ways and possibilities of infusing some of the concept ideas into their near future lineup of phones and devices.”
