Clamshell iPhone: is this the iPhone Nano?
March 21st, 2008The folks over at UnwiredView.com have posted mock-ups of a clamshell iPhone design that’s based on Apple’s own “dual-sided trackpad” patent drawings.
Says Unwired:
The main idea with this device is to separate capacitive touch sensor array and the phone display into two separate units. Then put the touch sensor array on a translucent (transparent) panel, make this panel touch sensitive on both sides – top and bottom and connect them with a hinge.
It’s a pretty cool idea – a smaller, multi-use hinged piece that swings down and serves as the main control.
What interested me was the part about drawing phone number digits with your finger and having the iPhone recognize them. Sound familiar? Instead of “handwriting recognition,” it would be “fingertip recognition.” And this wouldn’t be simple iPod or picture editing controls either. We’re talking about drawing a two with your index finger and a “2” coming up on-screen. Sounds an awful lot like our favorite green machine.
I like the clamshell idea because that’s how I like my cell phone. The Samsung model I currently carry is a flip phone. It folds up nicely into my pocket. Take that idea to the iPhone, and you’ve got what you see in the pictures at the top – sort of an idea for the iPhone Nano.
Even Unwired admits this is all speculation, and while their renderings are crafty, they probably have no relation to anything Apple would release. Few people get these kind of things right. Apple ends up blowing all the posturing away with a design so slick it beats whatever the Photoshop twerps come up with.
Still, drawing digits on an iPhone? The Newton idea keeps popping up.