Gservo
1st June 2002, 04:46 AM
Ever since the first mobile phone was invented, consumers have pressured manufacturers to reduce their size. Chances are the mobile you bought only two weeks ago is already being superceded by something the size of a matchbox. In fact, the joke has worn even thinner than that. Soon you’ll be able to buy a mobile phone made out of paper.
The phone, cutely dubbed the PS Call Me and designed by British tinkerer Stephen Forshaw certainly values style over substance. Wafer thin, the phone is stuck to a piece of paper, and can only be used to make one call.
The designer believes the gadget will be used almost like an electronic greeting card. The phone is as thin as a regular piece of paper, and could be posted to a loved one. Before sending, the phone can be programmed so that the recipient rings the sender.
Romantically, Forshaw believes birthday greetings, marriage proposals or other important messages could be ideally conveyed using the phone. For businesses, the phone could be used to check that packages have arrived, or as an emergency phone for children or the elderly.
Thankfully, the phone comes with a miniature earpiece, so the recipient is not expected to hold a flapping piece of paper up to their ear.
Forshaw didn’t corner the market on the disposable phone. A ponderously-named inventor, Randice-Lisa Altschul, pipped him to the post, with her cardboard Phone-Card-Phone, created all the way back in 1999. In fact, Forshaw might want to make sure he doesn’t have her lawyers on the phone, as the astute Altschul patented her design straight away.
Like Forshaw’s contraption, Altschul’s design only accepts incoming calls.
The technology used to create a phone with the thickness of a credit card is unique. It uses an elongated flexible circuit which is one piece with the body of the phone, part of her patented Super Thin Technology. The phone is cheap, and works until the battery runs out – estimated at about 60 minutes worth of calling time. The call time can be topped up, however, but it would probably make more sense to throw it away – chances are it would be dog-eared before too long anyway.
Forshaw, a second-year design student at Salford University in the UK, won first prize in a design competition commissioned by Sony, who are now whisking him off to the land of kooky gizmos, Japan, to demonstrate his contraption to their designers there. We can safely expect Tokyo teens to carry sheafs of the paper gadgets inside their schoolbooks as soon as the design hits the market.
The phone, cutely dubbed the PS Call Me and designed by British tinkerer Stephen Forshaw certainly values style over substance. Wafer thin, the phone is stuck to a piece of paper, and can only be used to make one call.
The designer believes the gadget will be used almost like an electronic greeting card. The phone is as thin as a regular piece of paper, and could be posted to a loved one. Before sending, the phone can be programmed so that the recipient rings the sender.
Romantically, Forshaw believes birthday greetings, marriage proposals or other important messages could be ideally conveyed using the phone. For businesses, the phone could be used to check that packages have arrived, or as an emergency phone for children or the elderly.
Thankfully, the phone comes with a miniature earpiece, so the recipient is not expected to hold a flapping piece of paper up to their ear.
Forshaw didn’t corner the market on the disposable phone. A ponderously-named inventor, Randice-Lisa Altschul, pipped him to the post, with her cardboard Phone-Card-Phone, created all the way back in 1999. In fact, Forshaw might want to make sure he doesn’t have her lawyers on the phone, as the astute Altschul patented her design straight away.
Like Forshaw’s contraption, Altschul’s design only accepts incoming calls.
The technology used to create a phone with the thickness of a credit card is unique. It uses an elongated flexible circuit which is one piece with the body of the phone, part of her patented Super Thin Technology. The phone is cheap, and works until the battery runs out – estimated at about 60 minutes worth of calling time. The call time can be topped up, however, but it would probably make more sense to throw it away – chances are it would be dog-eared before too long anyway.
Forshaw, a second-year design student at Salford University in the UK, won first prize in a design competition commissioned by Sony, who are now whisking him off to the land of kooky gizmos, Japan, to demonstrate his contraption to their designers there. We can safely expect Tokyo teens to carry sheafs of the paper gadgets inside their schoolbooks as soon as the design hits the market.