Japanese electronics company Kyocera has developed an innovative new transducer to replace outmoded — and underperforming — speakers in a phone.
According to Telstra’s 2011 annual smartphone survey, 33 per cent of questioned Australians admit to ‘throne surfing’. Sure, that was across all ages, but it’s still low compared to 91 per cent of Americans aged 28 to 35 using their device on the loo, according to the New York Times. Moreover, a quarter of Americans say they won’t go to the toilet without their phone! So are Aussies cleaner — or just less honest?
A young man in Ghana answered his mobile phone that was charging from a wall jack and was met with the full electrical current of his home’s wiring. He was knocked out but still had a weak heartbeat. His parents rushed him to the emergency room where he was proclaimed dead on arrival. The remains of the phone look to have been from a Nokia, but the good news is that we know such incidents aren’t the norm or, like, everyone in the whole world would be dead right now. [modernghana]
Tao Ma is at it again, cranking out another great phone concept. The new design, the LED Cellphone, incorporates hundreds of LEDs, all of which are used to create the mobile’s striking UI. Check out the gallery below to see a cellphone your plastic white MacBook would fall head over heels for.
Designed for those annoying bastards who always say “I want a phone that just calls,” the Freedom Phone does indeed bring freedom—freedom for the rest of us who are tired of you saying that every time you see a phone with fancy features. It’s a pay-as-you-go phone that you buy with minutes already on board. The front only houses a dialpad and volume controls, and the back holds information such as the phone’s number and other necessary information. Would we buy one of these if we were travelling in another country? Only if our phones didn’t work there. [Yanko Design]
Developed by Chinese company InterGrafx, Mobile Secretary was unveiled yesterday at Nokia World. Basically a 3D avatar that handles SMS and incoming calls on your mobile phone, Mobile Secretary comes in various shapes and forms (plump maternal, foxy blonde Svetlana, cool-headed brunette—wonder if there are any male ones?) You can even create your own avatar using a photo, something InterGrafx refers to as a “personalized dream baby.” So what else can it—sorry, she—do?
Slate’s running a pretty solid piece bemoaning the state of mobile gaming, in particular, the genocide of free games like Tetris and Snake as developers realised “consumers aren’t going to buy the cow when they can play Virtual Milkmaid for free. It’s obvious where this line of reasoning leads: Goodbye Tetris, hello $7 Tetris.”
The other great point the piece makes is that more complicated games—often miniature versions of full-size console or PC games—are a waste, since most mobile gamers just want to slay a few minutes in line at Starbucks, otherwise they’d have a DS or PSP. That, and yeah, paying money for Tetris does have a way of sucking the fun out of it. Have you guys dropped cash on games for your phone or simply resulted to alternate means of diversion? [Slate]
