3 teams up with Royal College of Art for phones of the future

When the mobile industry turns to college programs for design guidance, the results can be... shall we say, unusual. British carrier 3 recently enlisted the help of the Royal College of Art for a look at what phones of the future might look like and do, and needless to say, the results span the full gamut from mild to wild; on the mild side, for example, is the MÜ slider (pictured) that takes social networking to an extreme by showing all of the user's networks as points on a sphere -- totally realistic, totally believable, and probably destined for reality in the not-too-distant future. Moving to the wild end of the spectrum, the Auxo actually changes shape based on your profile. We don't see that one hitting shelves any time soon, but hey, keep on dreaming, guys.

[Via Shiny Shiny]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 4th 2008 11:50PM]

How about they start bringing over Japanese phones first?

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 17th 2008 6:28AM]

I really find these design concepts not interesting at all, neither the ID nor the actual substance behind any of the concepts in the show preseneted anything truely original and new. Whilst some of the sofware service interactions were starting to get interesting, I do hope 3 will not manufacture any of the designs, they will only add more waste to an industry that is overloaded with design for the sake of design.