Hasta La Ideas

Dezeen and MINI World Tour: in our second movie from Eindhoven, Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Dave Hakkens explains his concept for a modular mobile phone made of detachable blocks, an idea that looks set to become a reality now he has teamed up with Motorola.

Phonebloks is a concept for a mobile phone made of swappable components that fit together like blocks of Lego.

“It is basically made to be upgraded and repaired,” explains Hakkens, who was speaking at the Design Academy Eindhoven graduation show during Dutch Design Week last week, before his collaboration with Motorola was revealed.

“Usually we throw [a mobile phone] away after a couple of years, but this one is made to last.”

He continues: “You throw away a lot of good components [when you throw away a phone], because usually it’s only one item that is broken. With this phone you can only throw away components that are actually broken, or need repairing or upgrading.”

“If it’s getting slow you only upgrade the speed component, if you need a better camera you only upgrade the camera component. In this way you can keep the good stuff and the bad stuff you upgrade.”

The video of the concept Hakkens posted on YouTube quickly went viral, attracting over 16 million views.

“I’m just one guy at the Design Academy, I can’t make this phone myself,” says Hakkens. “So I put this video online and in the first 24 hours I had one million views on YouTube. I got a lot of nice emails from companies and people who want to work on this.”

Hakkens also put the project on Thunderclap, a crowdspeaking site where supporters donate their social reach rather than money.

His Phonebloks Thunderclap campaign closed yesterday, having gained 979,280 supporters. On closing, an automatic message about Phonebloks was sent out to all of his supporters’ social media contacts, reaching over 380 million people.

The approach has been successful in getting the attention of major players in the mobile phone industry.

Yesterday he posted a new video on his Phonebloks website, announcing that he has teamed up with American communications giant Motorola, which has been working on its own modular mobile phone concept called Project Ara for the last year.

“The whole point was to generate a lot of buzz,” says Hakkens. “So companies see that there’s a huge market and they need to make a phone like this.”

We drove around Eindhoven in our MINI Cooper S Paceman. The music in the movie is a track called Family Music by Eindhoven-based hip hop producer Y’Skid.

You can listen to more music by Y’Skid on Dezeen Music Project and watch more of our Dezeen and MINI World Tour movies here.

The post “With Phonebloks you only throw away
components that are broken” appeared first on Dezeen.

Love this concept of the Fridge Magnet that features a QR code-scanning function. Basically it provides information on the shelf life of food and keeps a tab on the expiry dates. In a good way, it also acts as an interactive, informative tool for children. It displays the image of the food item, its name, and place of origin, production date, proper temperature for preservation, and expiry date.

Here is how it works:

• As the days progress, Fridge Magnet will change color, creating a strong visual reminder about the food’s level of freshness.
• Green means the food is fresh, and red means the food has deteriorated and cannot be eaten.
• Fridge Magnet also can be used as a children’s toy, helping children to learn more about food while they play.

Fridge Magnet is a 2013 red dot award: design concept winner!

Designers: Hu Yaxing, Chen Zhipeng, Liao Haibo & Tang Yigang

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design!
(Stale Cabbage Patch was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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Almost every tech gadget now comes in a sexy new avatar except for the humble Walkie-talkie! Thanks to the Talky, hopefully some biggie (like SONY) will be inspired to redo the design and give it a fitting new look.

• TALKY uses the same technical radio to send the voice.
• The antenna is integrated in the frame.
• It sports a touch screen and doesn’t have many buttons.
• The screen is always off to save the battery.
• When we need to change the channel or check the information, we wake up the screen with the button.

Designer: Pengfei LI

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design!
(Walkie-talkie Get’s A Sexy New Look was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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News: Google-owned communications company Motorola is working with Design Academy Eindhoven graduate and Phonebloks creator Dave Hakkens to develop open-source modular mobile phones.

Yesterday Motorola revealed on its blog that it has been working for a year on a scheme named Project Ara, a “free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” which will allow users to develop, swap and replace modules for their phones to create customised handsets.

“We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines,” Motorola Advanced Technology and Projects group leader Paul Eremenko said.

The phones will comprise a structural base frame and modules that lock on to it, which could include an extra battery, additional screen or keyboard.

Motorola also announced it has teamed up with design graduate Dave Hakkens, who developed his Phonebloks concept for a modular phone where mix-and-match components clip onto a central board while studying at Design Academy Eindhoven and saw his idea go viral earlier this month.

“My idea succeeded from day one; I got a lot of responses to it,” Hakkens told Dezeen at the preview of the academy graduate show during Dutch Design Week earlier this month. “I’ve got a lot of people interested in developing it: engineers, technicians and companies.”

Hakkens’ video demonstrating his concept received over 16 million views on Youtube and Phoneblocks has almost a million supporters online.

“We’ve done deep technical work. Dave created a community. The power of open requires both,” said Eremenko.

Motorola hopes to share its technical development work with Hakkens’ widespread social media communities and will be releasing a developers’ kit this winter, so people can begin designing their own components for the phones.

Using volunteers known as Project Ara research scouts, Motorola will continue to develop the idea in a similar way to how Google trialled its voice-controlled wearable Google Glass technology, where the public was asked to try out the headset then offer feedback on the hardware and its features.

The move from Motorola follows on from its project called Sticky, where the company took a van full of hackable Motorola phones and 3D-printing equipment to top tech universities including MIT and Caltech for a series of experimental workshops.

“On that trip we saw the first signs of a new, open hardware ecosystem made possible by advances in additive manufacturing and access to the powerful computational capabilities of modern smartphones,” Eremenko said. “These included new devices and applications that we could never have imagined from inside our own labs.”

Read a full interview with Dave Hakkens in our earlier story.

The post Motorola teams up with Phonebloks
to create modular mobile phones appeared first on Dezeen.

The new Devialet line of high-definition audio systems leads the pack with its combination of rare elegance and unimaginable performance. The same exclusive sound amplification technology, known as ADH, combines the power of digital systems with the fidelity of analogue. Additions such as USB ports, ethernet capability, wireless streaming and even a remote app for Android and iOS devices are the latest updates catered for the modern user. The question isn’t why you should get a Devialet, but which one you should have!

DEVIALET 240 is both powerful and upgradable, this unit offers the best of Devialet technology with 10 digital inputs, 4 of which can be configured for analogue use. Vinyl owners can also digitize their records using this Devialet. The unit integrates a phono stage and two analogue inputs that can be adjusted for “Moving Coil” or “Moving Magnet” turntables, and one output to connect a subwoofer.

DEVIALET 110 is what music lovers and digital music creators have been dreaming of, whether their tracks are stored in digital format or accessible via streaming. While this unit has fewer inputs and offers less-advanced configuration options than the Devialet 240, the sound is identical. Upgradeable, easy-to-use and integrating the exclusive ADH® technology, this unit offers 2 x 110 W in stereo mode, so sit back and enjoy its amazing audio power. And thanks to its pure lines, and sleek design, it will fit right into your home.

DEVIALET 500- The star of the product line, the Devialet 500 consists of two Devialet units working together and a power of 2 x 500 W. The system is positioned as the most advanced high-end audio system of all times, with distortion as low as 0.00025%: a world first! It is still totally upgradable. The system is made to be configured in monoblock (each Devialet controls one speaker). It is operated with a single remote control and a hybrid cable to connect the two blocks.

DEVIALET 170- With its many professional digital and analogue inputs/outputs (10 in total, same as the 240), its power and wide range of customization and control options, the Devialet 170 is sure to quickly become the reference system for high-end audio enthusiasts. The power in stereo mode reaches 2 x 170 W, perfect for these high quality speakers used by audio lovers.

Designer: Devialet

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Yanko Design
Timeless Designs – Explore wonderful concepts from around the world!
Shop CKIE – We are more than just concepts. See what’s hot at the CKIE store by Yanko Design!
(The Ferrari of Audio Amplifiers was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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