Top 10 Android Phone and Tablet Concepts

Designers dream up the wackiest things, and they’re not short on ideas for cool Android phones and tablets. From transparent screens to self-charging tablets, there’s a concept to please any geek.

Just don’t expect to see any of these devices hitting stores soon--some of the materials haven’t even been invented yet.

This stunning transparent Android phone is called the CTP002. The concept involves using sapphire glass that turns into a capacitive touchscreen, with two titanium edges.

The design incorporates an accelerometer, which could track a car driver’s body movements to deploy the vehicle's airbags more efficiently in the event of a collision.

Photo: Mobiado

This Samsung Android phone concept has everything: It’s slim and flexible, it features a built-in projector and an HD camera, and it's a futuristic, wearable wristwatch.

Now we just need someone to invent the materials it’s made from.

Photo: Heyon You via Yanko Design

The concept-phone pairing of Bang & Olufsen with Samsung imagines an Android smartphone with a dual-core 1.5GHz processor and a 4.3-inch display in a slender design.

Accompanying the handset is a funky speaker dock from the renowned audio-equipment maker.

Photo: NAK Studio

The HTC Aurora Android tablet concept resembles the design of the original iPad but has a slightly larger screen (10.1 inches), a 5-megapixel camera, the Android 3.0 operating system, and 4G connectivity.

What’s different about the Aurora is that it uses a 4:3 screen aspect ratio, unlike most existing Android tablets, which have the 16:9 shape.

Photo: Abhi Aravind

Could the next Nexus phone look like this? Less curved than the Samsung Nexus S, this concept handset is also unbelievably thin.

In addition, the designer imagined potential interface changes to the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the Android operating system, with clean, spaced-out dock icons.

Photo: Ciccarese Design

If you love snug jeans and phones with large screens, the match can be difficult. This concept Android phone has a roomy 4-inch display in a thin casing.

A bulge at the bottom sports a 2-inch notifications display that you can see right from your pocket.

Photo: Alan Gerardo Farias via Yanko Design

The Motorola Bee concept is not a particularly slim phone, but it’s a unique idea in that it uses the tablet-oriented Android Honeycomb on a smartphone with a 4.3-inch display.

The usual Android control buttons are missing, but the phone has an 8-megapixel camera on the back, a fingerprint scanner, and 4G connectivity.

Photo: Joy Studios

The idea behind the HTC Tube is that an Android phone can slot into a tablet shell for extra battery life, computing resources, and screen real estate. The tablet can then become a full-fledged laptop when paired with a keyboard dock, while storage cartridges give you plenty of space for movies and music.

Sound kind of familiar? The Motorola Atrix 4G is a real product that has some of this multidevice action going on.

Photo: NAK Studio

This novel Android phone concept, called the Flip, has three displays running stock Android. When collapsed, the phone acts as a curved tablet, covered by Gorilla Glass.

The hinges are designed from steel mesh, and the designer even packed a full QWERTY keyboard into the back of one of the panels.

Photo: Kristian Ulrich Larsen

The EcoPad concept Android tablet case is made out of a wood-like material, but the most interesting thing about it is that it has no charging port.

Instead, the designers imagined that this tablet-and-case set would use a nano piezoelectricity film, which would create energy to keep the tablet going every time the user touched or pressed the screen.

Photo: Jun-se Kim, Yonggu Do, and Eunha Seo via Yanko Design