Kyocera EOS Concept Phone Moves Us Into the Mobile Future

One of the biggest news stories this week in the mobile phone industry was the announcement of a new EOS concept phone by Kyocera that brings an innovative new design style to the table and could inspire future handset makers in a myriad of ways. The unique design and the advanced features of this phone could make it the kind of thing that we’re likely to see a lot more of in the future assuming that the designers can work out some of the kinks associated with it. Although phones based on this original concept in the future will likely differ greatly from this one, the basic idea of the phone could definitely serve as a launching point for the handset designers of tomorrow. The three key features of note on this new phone are its flexible OLED display, its smart shape memory buttons and its use of kinetic energy power to self-charge.

Flexible OLED Display

The main design feature of interest with the new Kyocera EOS phone is the fact that it is flexible and can therefore be folded into different shapes. This is possible because the material that the phone is made from is a soft but semi-rigid polymer screen. This allows the phone to be converted into different shapes and yet to hold those shapes during use. In the case of this particular phone, the phone is folded up to approximately the shape of a wallet for making calls but can be opened up to display the keyboard and screen together (notebook computer style) or it can be opened completely to reveal a totally flat screen. Mobile phones based on this design in the future could have the potential to be converted into many different shapes which might be more convenient to cell phone users than what we are used to using today. We can just imagine the possibilities for shape-changing future phones.

Shape Memory Buttons

The buttons on this phone (which are arranged in full QWERTY style) are flush with the phone until you need to use them and then they pop up and are ready for use. This adds to the general flexibility of the design for this phone. It also makes the phone seem like a lot of fun to play with (at least so long as this feature remains the novelty that it is today). Descriptions of this feature of the phone from Kyocera speak to the futuristic appeal of this device; Kyocera describes the keyboard as being able to morph back and forth into view as needed which sounds a little bit like something out of science fiction. This could be something that touchscreen handset makers will look at closely in designing keyboard options for touchscreen-based phones in the future.

Kinetic Energy Power

Although the design of the phone is eye-catching and interesting, it is the power features of the phone that really speak to what we can expect from mobile phones in the future. This phone relies on kinetic energy power rather than battery power to generate a charge and stay in operation. Basically there are tiny generators inside of the phone which get activated when the phone is used; the more that you use the phone, the more energy gets generated to allow you to continue using it. This means that it is a perpetually self-charging device that works in much the same way as a self-winding watch works. This isn’t the first time that we’ve seen phones designed with this type of battery power. A new self-winding watch of this nature was just announced last month. This emerging trend suggests that improved development in this area could mean that this type of kinetic energy power is how we’ll be seeing future phones powered in the years to come.

Limitations of the New Design

These three features of the new Kyocera EOS phone are really interesting to take a look at and to hope to be able to play around with for real when phones like this eventually hit the market. However, there are some limitations that could hinder the phone’s reach into the future market. One major limitation is that the kinks of the kinetic energy power haven’t yet been worked out so more insight into this technology will have to be gained before phones like this can be created and used in the real world. Additionally, there are limitations of the capabilities of this phone in terms of what we’ve come to expect from our devices. It could be difficult to incorporate a camera phone into this sort of flexible design for example. It is also unclear at this point how well the phone will operate with different cell phone accessories and other devices. Since this is just a concept phone, it’s really just a starting point for figuring out how to include different phone features into the types of devices that we’re used to using today.

Future Phones Based on the Kyocera EOS Concept

Concept phones are always interesting because they pose creative out-of-the-box ideas for handset designers to consider when creating new technology. New designers will take these ideas and adapt them to create more realistic phones that will eventually end up in the marketplace. Kyocera itself is working hard to bring these conceptual items to the company’s real phones in the near future although there are no set dates or plans for how that will happen. What we will likely see in the future that comes directly out of this concept phone is further development into creating phones that can offer a flexible folding shape as well as phones that can rely on kinetic energy power to self-charge without the need to plug in. It’ll be interesting to see how much of this original concept phone gets retained in the related handsets developed in the future.