Pity the sweatshop gadget bloggers, who are compelled to chat up every incremental upgrade to the same old phones most of us carry around all day. That’s because change comes slowly to mobile phones. One reason is that many consumers just take the dumb phones their wireless carriers give them for free.
Another reason: cellphone manufacturers, already struggling when Great Depression 2.0 came along, are loath to retool their cookie-cutter factories and gamble on new designs. LG seems ready to embark on a little risk-taking, however. The Korean electronics maker recently awarded about $80,000 to designers in a contest at the CrowdSpring Ablinski’s idea, from which LG will build a prototype, is for a core phone that slides into a larger shell, which could be a touch screen or a netbook.
In true “Art Vandelay’’ fashion, Ablinski said it took her less than four days to lay out the idea for the phone, which she has dubbed the CC. LG will also build prototypes for the contest’s two other top entries: They are a clamshell phone with a swiveling display for gaming, and a phone that has multiple touch screens - layered one on top of the other, as in a reporter’s spiral notebook - for multi-taskers.
Some of the other ideas for LG phones stretch the limits of practicality, if not materials science. For example, one concept, called HiFi (pictured here), features a slender, curved touch screen phone that folds out into a pair of headphones. As much as I like the cherry-colored LED on the HiFi, I doubt LG could make a version durable enough for everyday use. Other designs put forward by the CrowdSpring community call for body-worn phones. One of those comes in the form of a bracelet.
'Add a music mixer to your iPhone A few User Friendly readers wrote to say they love Amber Star’s Meditate as much as I do. They also pointed out there are other ways to get your flow going on the iPhone. One approach is to make music, which is great if you can play an instrument or work the controls of a studio mixer.
An app from a software music-mix-maker, iKlax Media makes that easy. For those old enough to recall the early popularity of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity’’ (I’ve got the Bowie-inspired flight suit from Canal Street Jeans, to prove it), iKlax breaks the song out into separate tracks, each of which you can toggle up or down for an entirely new mix.
Bowie’s vocals, the acoustic 12-string, and the Mellotron are all broken out as separate tracks. Lazy iPhone and iPod Touch users can simply shake up their devices for random mixes. You can save your remixes to your device, and then - using iKlax’s desktop software - share them with your pals. EMI and iKlax recently released the app and a special “Space Oddity’’ EP (you must also buy the new track) to mark the 40th anniversary of “Space Oddity’’ and the first moon landing.