The Nokia N85 has been rumoured to be Nokia’s next attempt (after the N93) at a video-focused mobile phone.
Nokia have been tight lipped about what this might involve but the publication of a User Agent Profile for the upcoming phone has revealed a few choice details.
The User Agent Profile is a bit of code that a phone’s web browser uses to identify the capabilities of a phone. This lets a website be tailored to that phone.
The UAProf for the N85 sadly doesn’t seem all that great. All the standard 3G smartphone bits and bobs (although no GPS, weirdly) but only a 3.2 Megapixel camera and a QVGA 240×320 screen.
Sure, 32 megapicxels are not to be sniffed at, with the right lens, but surely Nokia could go to at least 5MP? It all seems a bit.. last year, somehow.
Nokia’s Haptikos project is an attempt to incorporate haptic feedback into touchscreen controls - essentially, making a touchscreen feel ‘real’ as if you were manipulating physical objects (such as keys or buttons) rather than just dragging your fingertip over smooth plastic.
Primitive haptic feedback can be achieved simply by making the entire handset vibrate, but as this patent application (unearthed by Into Mobile) illustrates, Nokia is looking to create something a bit more special.
Haptikos uses voltage sensitive elements within a film over the touchscreen. WHen voltage is adjusted, these element can be raised or lowered to change the texture of the touchscreen surface.
By raising and lowering these ‘bumps’ Haptikos can simulate the feeling of pressing and releasing a physical button -something that can be further enhanced by visual and audio feedback.
If you have ever used a touchscreen keyboard you will know that it is sometimes hard to tell if you have hit a ‘key’ or not - feedback like this will make something like the Nokia Tube’s keyboard much easier to use.
There is a full PDF of the application available here.
Good grief. We see a lot of unusual and innovative phone designs here at Pocket Picks.
Sleekly contoured handsets, foldable e-paper displays, holographic displays.. we’ve seen them all. Few, though, have come with quite the “Eh?” factor as this patent from Motorola.
Look at it - it’s a mobile with a Head Mounted Display. In fact, the mobile is the HMD. You literally fold out either end of what looks like a pretty chunky candybar and wear it on your face like a low budget Star Trek character.
Who knows, maybe it could turn out to be an iPhone killer?
Motorola has patented a new Bluetooth headset that can gather medical data about the wearer.
The device works like a standard headset but, in addition to the microphone and earpiece, alsohas an array of sensors that can monitor the wearer’s heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, etc.
The data is relayed to a phone handset where it can be analysed in situ or transmitted to a server for further processing.
Clearly, there are a number of practical uses that this tech could be put to - something like Nokia Sports Tracker could take on a whole new dimension if it could monitor more than just your footfalls and GPS location. You might even find it directing you to jog to the nearest A&E department if it judges you to be particularly unfit.
On the flipside, though, I’m not sure I would want my medical data flying around in the ether unless I was 100% sure about how secure the network was. If you think v1@gra spam is annoying, wait until you start geting ads for drugs tailored to your metabolism and offers of treatment for medical conditions you thought were private..
Now here’s something we haven’t seen before. Sony Ericsson has issued a patent for a mobile phone with a detachable screen. How wonderfully different indeed but really, what is the benefit of such a design?
To be honest, we can’t really think of any one thing that would make this sort of design a killer handset. Maybe the ability to have the screen as some sort of touchscreen MP3 player that can be detached from the rest of the phone might be quite nifty but not really the sort of thing that would make us want one more than say, a W760 or a Nokia N95.
Either we are lacking imagination or this thing really is as pointless as it looks. Our guess is that it is unlikely this thing will ever come to market. We’re humble here are Pocket Picks however, so if any of you brightsparks fancy proving us wrong with your ideas about what this could be used for then we are all ears.
(Via Unwired View)
It seems that Phillips isn’t the only company looking to muscle in quick on folding display technology for phones. A patent has cropped up revealing that Motorola has been pondering the idea too.
The interesting thing about the tech detailed in this patent is that the coiled screen would become solid when fully unrolled. More intriguing still is the fact that the patent also details foldable screens as keypads which suggests some sort of touchscreen element.
Although there are no guarantees that this will come to market, it is exciting to see a proven handset manufacturer dabbling with folding screen technology. Could the touchscreen’s days be numbered?
(Via Unwired View)
No matter how advanced phones become the one thing that will always separate them from their laptop cousins is the presence of a full size QWERTY which is why so many handset manufacturers are continually looking for a decent workaround.
The latest king of lateral thinking is Nokia, an accolade earned by an innovative new patent that has surfaced. The patent suggests an augmented reality approach, which is much more simple than it sounds. The idea is that you prop up your phone in front of you (on a supplied cradle) and on the screen will be a picture of the surface behind the device supplied via the camera on the back. Superimposed on the surface in the onscreen picture will be a full QWERTY keyboard and the idea is that you type on the surface using the screen as a reference for the keys while the phone takes note of the position and sound of your fingers to understand what it is you are typing.
Apparently the system would work with just one hand when there is no appropriate surface available (typing on your knee for example) and you can even simulate the sound of the tapping with your voice if you like. We don’t quite understand that last bit but everything else about this idea seems pretty ingenious. Whether Nokia will implement this tech in may of its handsets remains to be seen but a ten out of ten for thinking outside of the box (quite literally) is deserved here.
(Via Unwired View)
Apple has pretty much sewn up the whole multi-touch user interface malarkey on the iPhone via a series of pa
tents it registered during the device’s development. This obviously makes it impossible for other companies to imitate any of the functions without incurring a whooping great bill from Apple.
But that doesn’t mean that companies can’t try and work around the patents by coming up with some ideas of their own which is exactly what Nokia has been doing behind closed doors for some time now. A patent unearthed by Unwired View that dates back to six months post iPhone announcement, indicates that Nokia has all manner of wacky ideas planned for its hotly tipped S60 touch interface.
Besides workarounds for many of the basic functions that Apple has tied up legally Nokia has also developed an interface method that doesn’t even require you to touch the screen where the phone reacts to hand gestures made in three dimensional space and can even track the movement of your hand. Sounds very space age indeed though we can’t help but feel we would look like a berk if caught trying to conduct what would look for all the world like a primitive form of sign language with our handset. Still very interesting though.
(Via Unwired View)
As many iPhone early-adopters have noted, touchscreens are prone to being covered in greasy fingerprints after even light use. Obviously, someone at Nokia has realised this and decided to ‘leverage’ the phone+dabs combination by patenting a novel use for fingerprint recognition.
Nokia’s patent details not only a method of using a touch-sensitive display as a fingerprint scanner, but also a way of associating unique actions with the prints from different fingers.
Swiping your index finger over the screen could open your contacts list, say, and then a quick smear from your thumb might send an email. Perhaps you could expand the list of shortcuts by using your toes - who knows? At this stage it really is too early to tell.
Quite how practical this would be in action remains to be seen (particularly if you try doing it one-handed) but it one-ups Apple, and surely that is the main thing.
More Google manoeuverings in the mobile space: this time a patent, filed in America in March 2007, for a ‘Gpay’ payment system that uses SMS as its foundation. It’s not the first system of this type… But it’s the first one with ‘Google’ branding… And in light of recent news, that’s fairly significant.
Want to pay a bill or individual? Send a message to the Gpay system and it credits their bank account. The recipient doesn’t need a Gpay account, just the payer, although we’re assuming that the whole thing works more smoothly if both are Gpay-equipped. You can read the (seemingly endless) detail on the US Patent Office website.
(Via IntoMobile)
