The grainy video you see above is footage of the new Samsung concept phone. While much is not known about it, the video itself is quite amazing simply because it’s the first time a real physical phone has had a flexible display incorporated into it. The best part (for me) was when the phone folded and the keypad was on the other side, gives it a sort of realism to it, like it’ll be available soon.
When can you expect it?
Again, not much information is given about the concept phone, but chances are that you will be seeing it by next summer, winter at the latest. The real question though is whether or not the display is touch-sensitive — a large screen won’t do you much good if you can’t interact with it.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to develop a plane capable of flight as well as submerging underwater. “The objectives issued by DARPA are for a vehicle that would have an airborne tactical radius of 1,000 nautical miles, a low-level flight radius of 100 nautical miles (which may leverage surface effects), and a submerged tactical radius of 12 nautical miles.” The hope is that it could carry up to eight people and a 2,000 pound payload (check out their full proposal here).
The problem with developing a submersible aircraft is that air flows around structures differently than water. Developing a body that is efficient through the air as well as water will be incredibly difficult. It may be so daunting that the cost of developing and building working prototypes would render it un-obtainable. The funny thing is, the Navy has wanted something like this for over 60 years. “The U.S. Navy had begun contemplating the merger of aviation and submarine technologies into a single vehicle as early as 1946.” Even the Russians tried to dabble in submersible airplanes (video after the jump).
If there’s one thing people desire, it’s a simple mode of transportation that doesn’t make them look like a total dweeb. Packing this onto a scooter is hard enough, but designer Sarah Park may have done just that.
The most striking thing about this concept, besides the Bat Pod-like angles of the thing, is that it incorporates four tires into its design. Some of you may remember this kind of setup from Dodge’s incredibly fast Tomahawk. The parallel tires angle themselves depending on the angle of the vehicle — this allows the vehicle to have four tires instead of two for greater stability and balance.
Also equipped with headlights and taillights, a device such as this guarantees if you’re caught riding around on it you won’t get the laughs the Segway does.
We’ve thought about it over and over — Why can’t I just take a picture with my eyes? In this latest concept from Mac Funamizu, you can almost do just that.
In this concept, you wear a pair of sunglasses capable of taking photos from the perspective of the user. It tracks the movement of your hands, allowing you to frame the picture, and snaps the photo with a signal from your left eye (being the shutter). Although information on the concept is limited, one assumes that the sunglasses would use the focus of the eye to determine which items the photo will focus on. Reminds me of the movie Strange Days.
Although wildly fantastic, it’s still a product that is capable of existing in the near future. Hand-tracking technology is getting better seemingly every month while the amount of mega-pixels you can cram onto a pinhead is skyrocketing (Ericsson expects to have a cellphone capable of recording HD video by 2012 as well as taking 20 mega-pixel photos). But the one thing we’re learning more and more is that the future of technology isn’t going to be a bunch of specialized devices, but of a single device capable of doing the work of everything else.
