Here's another Nokia phone concept, called the "Nokia Eco Sensor Concept."
The Nokia Eco Sensor Concept is a 'green' mobile phone, designed to enhance our awareness about both the environment and of ourselves. The Nokia Eco Sensor Concept examines how 'green technologies' may be used in the future to create ever more sustainable devices. Inspired by the "three R's" principle -- reduce, reuse, and recycle -- the concept explores a range of potential new materials and technologies such as printed electronics (the use of small components through nanoinks), bio-materials (polyactic acid (PLA) or other biomass-based modifiers), and reclaimed materials (the phone's casing will be made from 100% reclaimed steel). It also looks at ways that mobile technology could employ mobile sensing to monitor and report on both the health of the user and the surrounding environmental conditions.
The concept consists of two parts – a wearable sensor unit, which can sense and analyze your environment, health, and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone. The sensor unit, which can be customized to monitor and display other specific data as well as well as environmental monitoring options such as atomspheric gas-levels, etc., will be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that provide power to the sensors. It also has an ultraviolet radiation sensor.
By using the NFC (Near Field Communication) technology the information collected will be relayed by touch from the sensors to the phone or to other devices that support NFC technology. Both the phone and the sensor unit will be as compact as possible to minimize material use, and those materials used in the design will be renewable and/or reclaimed. Technologies used inside the phone and sensor unit will also help save energy.
In order to produce screens that consume less energy than LED or OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode) display units, Nokia chose to use electrowetting technology. In this technology electrical voltage is applied to tiny droplets of oil, causing them to expand and contract. When compressed under the display glass, the expanding oil droplets produce an effect similar to a pixel "lighting up".
Sounds interesting??? Well, lets take look into the future. The Nokia Eco Sensor Concept will be shown for the first time in North America at CES 2008 where they will show the just-announced Nokia 3110 Evolve candybar phone, which I think is a tiny step in the Eco Sensor Concept detailed above. As the name suggests the phone appears to be an evolved version of the Nokia 3110 Classic. Certainly, there is nothing to write home about it, but Nokia 3110 Evolve's claim to fame is that it's "bio-covers" made with over 50 percent renewable materials and comes in a box made of 60 percent recycled stuff. On the technical side, the Evolve's charger is Nokia's most efficient ever, but don't be fooled: it's not a high-efficiency charger due to the extreme speed in recharging your phone, it's high-efficiency is due to the fact that it uses 94 percent less energy than the standard units. The Nokia 3110 Evolve is supposed to evolve its way into the cell phone market sometime in the first quarter of 2008. Nokia has not disclosed the price yet, but it’s supposedto be very low.
Nice, but not impressive. Thanks for the look into the future Nokia.
And for reference, here's what the original Nokia 3110 Classic looked before Nokia bio-tricked it out:
