Hasta La Ideas

While we’re all living with the fear of an impending ‘port-less iPhone’, one company’s got a clever workaround to the charging woe. Meet the Urbanista Phoenix, a set of TWS Earbuds with solar panels built into their case. Sure, the Phoenix comes with a USB-C port to conventionally charge your earbuds, but it also ambiently charges every time you leave the case on a table with access to sunlight. It’s a clever, elegantly-executed solution that works without cables, wireless chargers, or even human intervention!

Don’t you hate it when you pop your AirPods into your ears only to get a notification that you forgot to charge them? Well, the Urbanista Phoenix seems to have an unusually sensible fix. Equipped with a Powerfoyle solar panel on the charging case, the Phoenix just keeps charging your TWS Earbuds whenever it has access to sunlight or any bright light. This isn’t the first time that Urbanista’s incorporated solar panels into its audio solution, though. Just last year, the company announced the Los Angeles, a pair of wireless headphones with a solar panel built into the headband. The Phoenix builds on that rather clever idea by introducing solar panels onto the charging case instead (because the TWS earbuds themselves are too small to put solar panels on). This effectively allows the earbuds to charge in their case without you needing to physically plug them in or place them on a wireless charging mat. It’s incredibly convenient, quite literally effortless, and seems like the kind of idea that other companies should rapidly adopt too instead of pushing us to buy chargers, dongles, and expensive phones with ‘reverse wireless charging’ capabilities.

Designer: Urbanista

The earbud themselves are just like your average TWS earbuds. They come with a familiar stemmed design that’s practically a design archetype now thanks to the AirPods, but they also sport silicone ear-tips for a better seal. They even have touch-sensitive controls built onto ths stems that let you control the Phoenix’s features, including being able to summon and talk to your phone’s voice assistant. Unlike the AirPods, however, the Phoenix also has built-in active noise canceling and is even equipped with noise-canceling microphones for crystal-clear audio conversations and calls. Other features include IPX4 water resistance so you can wear it while sweating it up during workouts, onboard sensors for in-ear detection, a companion app, and a battery capacity of 8 hours for the earbuds, and 32 additional hours with the charging case. Combine that with solar charging and it’ll probably be weeks or months before you even need to find a USB-C cable to charge the Phoenix.

The Phoenix’s game-changing feature still remains its solar charging ability. The only minor trade-off is that as a result, the Phoenix has a slightly large charging case to fit the panel, but the benefit absolutely outweighs the con. The result is a pair of TWS earbuds that, at least in theory, never need plugging in. As long as you can keep the charging case near a source of light, the Phoenix will run perpetually without requiring a charging cable or a charging mat. Moreover, and this is the biggest win so far, you don’t need to REMEMBER to charge the Phoenix. Something most scatterbrained people like me will really appreciate!

The Urbanista Phoenix comes out later in the year, priced at $149.

The post These TWS Earbuds have solar panels on their charging case and it’s honestly an incredible idea first appeared on Yanko Design.

Electronic devices and gadgets have become an integral part of our lives in the past decades or so. But they’re not the most earth-friendly and actually contribute a lot to global waste when they near their life cycle and cannot always be recycled. Eco-friendly designers are always looking for ways to create devices using sustainable materials while not sacrificing quality. A lot of them remain product concepts but hopefully, we get to see them become actual devices soon.

Designer: Aakansh Chaturvedi

Bambass is a concept for an open-back headphone that uses traditional bamboo weaving as a major component of its sustainable material. It is made up mostly of thin coiled bamboo stripes which are not just sustainable but also bring you a more insulated sound. You get a stainless steel strip to help support the headband that is made mostly from stacked stripes of bamboo. The joint for the earcups has a screw mechanism that allows you to adjust the cups to your comfort. Lastly, you get a single layer coating of melamine to preserve the life cycle of the bamboo material.

Aside from being a pair of headphones, Bambass also brings a cultural aspect to it by utilizing the art of bamboo weaving. They also utilized vegan leather for the covering so there can be different color options while still maintaining the sustainability part by lessening the carbon footprint needed to produce such a device. Since this is still a concept with product renders, we don’t know yet the quality of sound for headphones that will be using these materials.

It does look pretty good in terms of design as the use of bamboo and vegan leather with a little bit of stainless steel gives you a unique-looking pair of open-back headphones. Adding bamboo weaving for insulation is both eco-friendly and may actually sound better than the current devices in the market. Hopefully, this will just be the first design as the plan is to create more electronic products using sustainable materials so we as consumers will not contribute any more e-waste.

The post Headphones concept uses bamboo for sustainability first appeared on Yanko Design.

Slated to board the International Space Station in 2024, MIRA—which stands for Miniaturized In-Vivo Robotic Assistance—is a remote-controlled surgical robot created by Virtual Incision Corporation, a Nebraska-based medical technology company that recently signed a contract with NASA. The robot is purported to perform medical surgeries by being remotely guided from Earth, a service that could provide longterm help aboard deep space missions. MIRA is uniquely suited for the undertaking as it weighs only two pounds. While it still has to undergo further testing before it performs lifesaving surgeries, the invention could be a major development for health providers who need to reach people in remote areas—whether in space or on Earth. Learn more about it at Futurism.

Image courtesy of Virtual Incision Corporation

“Why throw away paper packaging when it can be useful?” asks industrial designer Wyatt Coe, who came up with this concept:

“The Scotch Flip dispenser packaging becomes the product itself. Effectively reducing cost and environmental impact, while reinforcing the creative roots of the brand.”

Coe produced this in Offsite‘s Real World Sketching class, led by Kelly Custer.

Here’s a simple concept for a water bottle with pill storage in the cap, by South Korean industrial design consultancy WM.Assi:

As medicated as we Americans are, I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything like this, at least not in the wild, over here.