Artemy Lebedev wants to create a better iPhone.
 

For all of you that don't know Artemy Lebedev:
http://images.derstandard.at/20061013/portrait.jpg
It's that Russian guy who solves "design problems" by creating awesome stuff like the Optimus Maximus keyboard, which can be bought for one and a half thousand bucks. So recently I browsed his website and hey, he found a new problem:

Problem: Develop a draft design concept for a mobile device.

http://www.gizmos.es/wp-content/uplo...ev-scartel.jpg

The color. It's plain black. I like that style. Also, "Sensor display size: 850×480 pixels". That's pretty awesome. That would be, like, three times the pixels the iPhone has to offer? Other interesting stuff: a "hold" button, a "sound off" button and the "auxiliary 5-position joystick control"!

So what do you think? :cool:

I *love* Artemy Lebedev. I've often purchased his Ridibundus pillows for people as a gift, to much fanfare.

http://img.artlebedev.ru/everything/...ridibundus.jpg

In response to the phone... I dunno. I guess it all depends on what it's running as an OS. Google Android seems like an obvious candidate, but I guess we'll have to see. The one thing that strikes me as odd is that it has two video cameras on it. Seems a bit much.

It is quite pretty though.

It's not an art.lebedev product like optimus maximus. They just developed the design for Scartel. I think it looks a bit shit, even the iPhone is better. That little joystick doesn't look very easy to use either.

Their new umbrella is definitely better.

It looks like a block of black. Although functionality wise, it does have it's advantages over the iPhone. Too bad I'm not a big fan of cellphones.

A World War II era morse code transmitter has functionality advantages over the iPhone in that you can produce a message on it first time without accidentally pressing the wrong buttons a thousand times and it taking twentyfive minutes for a short text.

Touchscreen phones will never be as useful as those with buttons. Otherwise why aren't we all typing on a flat, touchscreen data tablet rather than a keyboard with buttons?

The ultimate shortcoming of the iPhone is its software, not the size/resolution of its screen or the lack of buttons. Right now it seems like the iPhone is just an iPod Touch that happens to be a phone, not the other way around.

Truth.

It's not even that the iPhone is such a bad phone to begin with because it's actually a pretty spiffy device if you can install a load of useful apps onto it. However, Apple wants to keep its neat little stranglehold on its marketshare and refuses to let their user base have any freedom on what they put on their phones, so we have a subpar OS on the phone with only subpar applications that they sanction for it. Sure you can hack your phone but that voids the warranty and if you try to update it or sync it to your computer you have to reformat it and put all your data back into it. It's fucking rubbish and we all know it.

Don't get me wrong, I love Apple but, aside from their top-end computers, the rest of their line up of products has been taking a nosedive for quite sometime; the iPhone is just the biggest of all their disappointments so far.