Amazing Community-driven Mobile Phone Concept by Mozilla [video]

Just because somebody can make a 3D animation of something doesn't mean that they can build it. I know it's a "concept", but so is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE4Wn0cjrO4 (German, but video speaks for itself)

I hate concept videos. They solely exist to raise everyones expectations to unattainable levels. Should the product ever get released people will be disappointed by realities like battery capacity and a pico projector only working in a very dark room. I wish others would adopt Apple's strategy of announcing a product with a live demo and a release date within months of that showing.

* I get this is a Mozilla 'vision' but watching videos of the MS Courier left me bitter concept videos </rant>

It's a decent video, but it's also just a dream with nothing restraining it in terms of feasibility.

The challenge of good design is making the best of what's possible. Concepts that are only on paper or in image don't present that challenge, and so it's hard for me to get excited by them. After all, we should have flying cars and jetpacks by now right?

If (like me) you normally skip video links, give this one a go. It's brief and all visual, so a video really makes sense in this case. And, practical or otherwise, it's creative and thought provoking!

The UI on the phone appears to be Android, while the UI projected on the screen looks an awful lot like Windows 7. Running Win7 in a VM on a phone seems like it would be pushing the hardware a bit.

A bit more seriously, how production-ready are IR-based input devices and pico projectors? I get the impression that this is more sci-fi than a design study for a practical product based on current technology.

Wow, don't miss this.

I'm ready for a combo IR touchpad, keyboard, and PICO projector right now.

Brilliant work.

They should have made the projected keyboard more Swype-y.

I think though that in the existing IR keyboards there's one beam for "drawing" the keyboard, and a second invisible beam parallel with the surface which actually detects where your fingers are pressing. It's not clear where that second beam is coming from in this video. You could probably do the touchpad with just that single invisible beam, though of course iPhone and Android aren't made for touchpads and cursor arrows, but rather for direct finger interaction.

The pomegranate is way better: http://www.pomegranatephone.com/

Amazing phone + high quality video. Could something like this actually work with today's batteries?

I've been waiting for a pico-projector-enabled phone since I saw The Island.

Yes please!

(actually I'm surprised in their pseudo desktop mode while docked they didn't try and use the display as a touchpad like interface.

brilliant, thats my next phone!

phone?? wtf!

Bloody seabird flavor!

Implementation is the albatross.