As reported through Yanko Design, Metatrend Media designers In-oh Yoo and Sun-woong Oh have designed a concept for what they hope will be the next big thing in smartphone/charger design. It’s a combination charging station and phone where the phone rests in space between two magnets in the charger during the charging process.
The concept, which would presumably replace the standard clock-radio adorning nightstands across the world, would feature magnets that would suspend the phone and cause it to spin when a call or SMS comes in. The message or caller ID would be displayed in 3D via an after-image effect.
The concept design just an illustration at this point. That said, I’m not sure about science behind charging a device suspended between magnets (maybe some crazy offshoot of inductive charging?), or whether placing magnets near delicate phone electronics would be the best thing at any rate, but that isn’t what has me scratching my head the most about this idea.
Let’s say it’s 3AM and I get an emergency call. My hover-phone is hovering snugly in its space-age charger, spinning like mad to show me in cool 3D that something important is going down. I reach over to pick it up and…well, how am I going to pick it up? It’s spinning fast enough to leave an after-image of the screen in my vision! If it’s a nice heavy phone I’m going to hurt myself, and if it’s a lightweight plastic device, I’m going to knock it out of orbit and break it when it falls to the floor. Hopefully replacements are cheap.
Maybe if they can make it spin as it charges and stop spinning when a call or SMS comes in? What do you think?
[Yanko Design via Wired Gadget Lab]
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