APR 16

The new concept phone design from Kyocera makes solar phones look archaic. The EOS phone is a flexible, folding phone with a large OLED display. Even more interesting is that the phone is powered by kinetic energy.

When being used for calls, the phone remains folded up like a small wallet, but it can unfold to reveal the OLED screen and QWERTY keyboard. The flexibility is achieved through using a soft, semi-rigid polymer skin. The keyboard itself is flexible and has shape memory so that the keys pop up for use, but blend into the surface when not being used.

The coolest feature is that using the phone also powers it. Small piezoelectric generators derive an electric charge from its use. The more you fiddle with the phone, the more energy is generated.

This phone is still in the early design stages, but features of this phone could end up in upcoming versions of Kyocera phones. Continue reading for Kyocera's full description of the EOS.

"The concept EOS envisions a future where we have a more humanistic relationship with our phones. Appealing to our haptic senses, a soft, semi-rigid polymer skin surrounds a flexible OLED display. The metaphor of a 'living' skin was used for its notions of protection and constant evolution, providing a heightened user experience.

Shape memory allows keys to morph up from its surface when needed and fade away when not in use. The flexibility of the screen allows for greater adaptability of form and interaction - it maintains a compact shape (the size of a small wallet) for simple phone calls, and unfolds to reveal a large widescreen display. The device feeds off of our physical interaction with it, translating kinetic energy into an electric charge via an array of nano-scale piezoelectric generators. The more we interact with EOS, the more energy it creates - without using batteries.

Though the Kyocera future concepts are still in their early design stages, the design teams from San Diego and Bangalore are exploring many different ways and possibilities of infusing some of the concept ideas into their near future lineup of phones and devices."

via Core 77

Comments (10)

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written by Magnulus, April 16, 2009

I love concept devices. They're like reading those "Look at the world of tomorrow" features in populistic science magazines. Of course, they fail to mention that the "tomorrow" they're talking about is located in some parallel dimension we'll never meet. Same with concept phones as cars and all sorts of other things.

It would have been an awesome phone, were it not for the fact that they'll never implement any of these features in a way that works properly, at least not for another many many years.

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Wow
written by Carl, April 16, 2009

Thing is, I would pay a _lot_ for this phone. That is the coolest thing I've ever seen. So yeah, maybe it's a concept idea, and it would be expensive to manufacture, but there are people out there who would still buy it, unless it was just insanely expensive.

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good luck
written by cke, April 16, 2009

Piezo's that fit inside a cellphone, nano or otherwise, will never generate enough energy to run it. Nice dream, though.

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Perpetual motion machine?
written by frisbee, April 17, 2009

Sounds like a perpetual motion machine. A phone which powers itself by reusing the energy it releases! Even when kinetic energy is added, I doubt whether this would be able to generate enough power to prevent the need of an other type of recharging (like solar or grid). Let's hope they succeed (and make it very much affordable to all celphone users)!

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written by nick, April 17, 2009

It doesn't use it's own energy to power itself. It translates the users' energy into power, creating an atmosphere of attachment and dependency. Much like we birth and nurture our spawn, we could soon nurture the tools we use.

Though this phone seems a little outlandish and will probably end up being implemented in a different tool altogether, I would love to get my hands on it.

The problem I see with this concept is that its use is completely dependent on how much we want to play with it. It is expected nowadays that all phones have cameras and plenty of storage space for texting and media. With such a small power source, there's not much we could fit into the small package.

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written by Ghonadz, April 22, 2009

The flexible screen seems a more important and possibly even cooler feature than the piezo power feature. The nano piezoelectric thing may or may not work out but some better power source for this scale applications will settle out eventually. I'm much more jazzed about the possibility of folding out a larger flatscreen from a smaller, wallet-sized package. If they can make it so it doesn't show the creases, as in the picture in the article, that would be something!

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got to ge tme one of these!
written by sam, April 23, 2009

make it work and get it on the market!
and please send me one... though i dont have a lot of money. If it comes with a lifetime guarantee and no built-in-obscelesence (however you spell that) then id gladly save the money up!

fiddling with it... id probably play with it a lot of the time like you would a stress ball or powerball... id be interested to know if this would add charge too, (spinning it around in your hand, playing catch with it...) or if you can only charge it up by pressing the buttons?

and what, prey tell, do these special now-you-see-me-now-you-dont buttons look like??

x+x-x

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Outright winner...!?
written by bhairav, June 23, 2009

Add a hands-free headset....and a more plausible power source than nano piezo generators (kinetic watches use proven technology - shake it!). Of course, the price imposed by such new technologies will kill it outright. The concept is righton though....

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written by Fred, July 17, 2009

interesting design! i like

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written by ..., January 26, 2010

This is an awesome idea.. using magnets- since recent developments- to magnify the energy produced could posssibly create enough energy. I think it could work. Dont give up- we need more clean ways to create and store and use energy even if its small like a cell phone or iPod or big like a speed bump!

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