Black Berry Empathy Concept Phone

A neat concept for a BlackBerry phone called Empathy has been cooked up by designer Daniel Yoon, focusing on sharing our mood with friends. It’s a bit of a throwback to the early LiveJournal and MySpace days, which were all about updating mood statuses, but there are some interesting twists on old ideas here. The concept includes a high-tech mood ring which shares biometrics data with social networks. Not only can contacts see what kind of mood you’re in based information like blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate, but message notifications on the Empathy would colour the whole surface of the phone reflective of the mood of their sender. That same device surface colour idea would allow the phone to go clear when idle and opaque when active.

The social networking aspect reminds me of the BlackBerry Enterprise’s Server free/busy lookup – except instead of seeing if your contacts available for a meeting, you can see if they’re in the right mood for a call. Some Android phones already do this by showing social network status updates on incoming calls from contacts, but the idea of that data being gathered passively is very new.

Yo Yo Phone

Yo yo is one of the most popular pocket toy that consists of a spool and a length of string knotted at one end. They have existed from centuries and manage to captivate everyone, from kids to adults, even today. Using the design and its popularity as an inspiration, Shaik Ridzwan has designed a cellphonechristened the Yo Yo phone. The designer has intelligently tried to give the phone a silhouette that won’t get lost in the crowd, in terms of cellphone designs.Yo yo phone comes wedged with a “Trick Mode” in which the user has to perform a trick to make a call to an assigned contact. Wow! This sure is trick(y) and quite amusing.

Like a yo yo has a lease that causes the spool to turn while suspended in mid-air, even the phone has not been deprived of one. The earphones are wireless and look like a precious pearl ring. They can be fixed in the leash ring, which when snapped apart look like pearl earrings. Well, if you think that the phone just looks like a yo yo with a spool and leash in place, let me tell you the user can play with it as well. So, entertainment and communication come packed in this cute looking phone. But the designer always imagined someone playing with a yo yo and suddenly it starts ringing and the user plugs in the headphones in the leash and attends the call. Shaik Ridzwan derived heavy inspiration from toys and jewelry which reflects in the creation. When opened, the Yo Yo phone looks to me like a compact powder case and I can bet girls will go absolutely gaga.