Hasta La Ideas

Noting our growing reliance on smartphones, designer and entrepreneur Emre Kosmaz is predicting that hardware is ultimately a zero-sum game: the more we use smartphones for personal computing and connectivity, the less we need tablets, laptops and PCS. He started his eponymous Bay Area company “to change the way people use the computer through an innovative hardware concept.” Unveiled yesterday, just two days before what could be yet another historic debut at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Kosmaz Technologies presents the NexPhone:

NexPhone wants to change mobile computing forever by taking the power of the smartphone to an unmatched level like never before. NexPhone is designed essentially to become user’s primary PC to create, view and edit documents and other content. This is achieved by Ubuntu for Android software, bringing real computer experience… NexPhone also becomes your tablet when it is used with our tablet dock and becomes your Laptop or PC bringing full desktop experience when it is used with our NexLaptop or NexMonitor docks. Together, they provide revolutionary interactive computing experience that empowers consumers to use one single device at home, at the office or on the road without the need of synchronizing their content or contacts with other devices.

By tapping the ever-increasing processing power of mobile devices, Kosmaz augurs a smartphone-centered ecosystem of peripherals as analogues for the current categories. “With NexPhone, we are rethinking what a smartphone can be in the future and creating a new category of consumer electronic device that combines the power of a tablet and PC with the latest smartphone features, while eliminating consumers’ need for additional computers.”

Aside from the OS and renderings, details are scant at this point; in the “Design Story” section of the site acknowledges that Apple is the only consumer electronics company that has achieved an iconic brand identity. Recent litigation aside, I’m more interested in the fact that the NexPhone is expressly designed as a sort of anti-cloud device, forgoing the need for syncing by localizing all of one’s data within a single, pocketable object. (The Phone is attached to a data plan, providing connectivity when attached to any of the larger devices.)

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of plug-and-play hardware concept: the Asus version from nearly a year ago was met with quite a bit of skepticism. Personally, I thought that the previous ‘nesting’ concept—the Asus smartphone plugged into the tablet like a removable battery—was rather more elegant… but the question remains: yea or nay?

(more…)