A 15 year old name Andrew Kim recently posted a mobile phone concept he calls the Butterfly in a design forum soliciting critique and advice. To his surprise many of the senior forum members commented on how his concept is better thought out than some designers twice his age. So what's so hot about the Butterfly? It's a slick horizontal slider with dual AMOLED touch screens. At first glance it looks like any other slider with screen on one side, camera on the other. Unlike other sliders, the second screen slides up away from you and clicks into position at an angle - a design feature he calls "slide & tilt". The first screen then becomes your keypad. Cool huh? On the rear of the phone, you'll find a SVGA camera (megapixels?) and replaceable lithium ion battery. He's even included an SD-micro slot for memory expansion, Wi-Fi and music/video playback. On the side is a hold switch to deactivate the touch screens. Even the UI on this thing is unique. It's a mash up of the iPhone, PSP and Helio interfaces. Menus are accessed thru a wheel of icons. Drilling down each menu item gives you a crossbar experience similar to the PSP. The entire interface is manipulated by your finger via tapping and dragging motions similar to the iPhone. In terms of industrial design, the Butterfly is quite nice. I do have a few gripes with it tho. First, in order to dial a number you have to slide it open, dial, then close it to initiate the call. It would make more sense to be able to access your address book or bring up a keypad on the main touch display. My other gripe is the screen. They are incredibly narrow making web browsing, reading, viewing pictures and watching videos an awkward experience. If the screens were redesigned to fit a true 16:9 aspect ratio - we'd have a winner. One thing I do love is the Nintendo DS-like form factor. In fact if this weren't a phone, it could easily pass as the Nintendo DS Lite Version 2.
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