Following our anti-Dubai-gigarchitecture article on the slimmest houses in the world, reader Micah Sherman has sent us which may be the thinnest, smallest house in any city in the world. Absolutely crazy.
Fuel cell tech is literally just around the corner from being inside many of our gadgets, and with this new design it could allow for some unusually-shaped gizmos. A company called MyFC is showing these bendy, flexible hydrogen-powered cells that can be draped over the interior curved surfaces of a gadget in a way that is tricky with current battery tech. The FuelCellSticker devices are just 3mm thick and weigh only 5.7 grams, and can put out 0.5V at 0.9W, though you’d stack them for more volts. There’s also a more conventional-shaped model, and the company is starting to make them to order. Clever stuff. [Crunchgear]
Pantech’s Slate is billing itself as the world’s thinnest QWERTY phone, which is true in more ways than one. The feature set is pretty anorexic—a 1.3-megapixel camera should not be a bullet point—but it’s really cheap too, only $US50 with a two-year contract, so it’s perfect if you want the absolute cheapest, most stripped down texting device possible on AT&T.
Jesus had a nice up close look at the ZX1 TV from Sony back at IFA a few weeks ago, and his response was pretty similar to our own after seeing it at UCHI this week: Wow.
The TV, which manages its ultra-slim body by outsourcing its TV components to a separate box, only needs a single power cable to power the screen. It connects to the other box – which includes all the same connections and controls you’d find on a Bravia TV – using a proprietary wireless technology from Sony. Apparently it doesn’t interfere with any of your other wireless techs (like your garage door or wireless headphones), and the box can be hidden away up to 15 metres away.
Logitech’s last keyboard offering was the wireless touchpad diNovo for Macs, and though this new keyboard is neither wireless nor touchpad-enabled, it’s got two things going for it: it’s got back-lit keys for night typing, and it’s just 9.4mm deep. That’s skinny, though not quite Apple keyboard aluminium skinny. Due in October in the US and Europe for US$80. [Press release]
newVideoPlayer("/philipsultrathin_gizmodo.flv", 520, 410,""); Philips is working on their own ultra-thin backlighting technology. But compared to the absolutely stunning Sony ZX1 9.9mm-thin TV, the Philips 8mm 32-inch model is a) just too small and b) just a prototype. However, it looks like it uses a similar LED-in-the-corner backlighting technology. [More IFA 2008 Coverage]
Sharp showed off an impressively anorexic concept display at IFA last year, and this year they’ve turned it into production reality. In 52- and 65-inch sizes, the Sharp XS1 LCD TV is a hair less than an inch thick (23mm 0r .9 inches) and displays 1080p, 100Hz (this is Europe) and a contrast ratio of 10,000:1. Slated for release in the UK this October, we still don’t know the price and/or whether or not chubby Americans will be allowed to be seen in the same room with such a svelte TV.
Sony Japan’s ZX1 series 40-inch display is only 9.9mm thick at its narrowest, and 11.8kg. The display itself has only 1 HDMI port, while a wireless box can send the 120Hz, 1080p display up to 1080i images over a 5GHz channel many suspect is WHDM. That external port box will have 3 HDMI, 2 component, s-video, VGA, and even USB, mouse, and LAN port. All menus will be driven through an XMB Playstation-style crossmedia interface. Check out our hands-on of the skinny TV at IFA here. [Sony JP via Sony Insider]
While there have been several other ultra-thin TVs to cheat on size by moving some of the set’s guts into an external box, we’re starting to see a few of the biggies taking advantage of the newly-codified WHDI spec to beam the signal from the external box to the screen wirelessly. Details are somewhat thin on these new concept Mitsubushi panels, which are 40mm (a hair over 1.5 inches) thick and should reach manufacturing before the year is up. But their use of WHDI (like these Sharp sets before them) to link the panel to the external tuner box adds an interesting twist to this trend.
Alongside the Blu-ray recorder and new TV range that Panasonic unveiled the other day were a couple of prototype TVs that showcase the upcoming technologies in their future plasma screens.
The first example was their “World’s Thinnest” plasma, a 50-inch monster which measured in at 24.7mm thick and weighed just 22kg. Although we’re pretty sure the title of world’s thinnest actually goes to Pioneer, having a TV measure in at less than half the thickness of the current range – and at a fraction of the weight – will give consumers a whole new range of mounting options.
