What’s New Tomorrow? Sure, we were salivating when we were reading up on all these cool gizmos and technologies, but something was missing. That’s the whole problem actually—something’s always missing. When you see a cool smartphone with a 7-megapixel camera, PDA functionality, a hard drive bigger than what desktops had five years ago, and a mobile CPU faster than what was on that same five-year old PC, you still end up saying, “I wish it had a notebook’s functionality!” We’re geeks, and we’re happy to admit that we’re never satisfied!

Well, whether any manufacturer bothers to listen or not, we decided it’s OK to dream. We sat down and tried to come up with our dream gadget, or more correctly, every geek’s dream gadget. We called our gadget GOD. Now, before you get all righteous, start screaming blasphemy, and damn us to eternal torture in hell, you should know that GOD, here, is an acronym for ‘Gadget of Our Dreams!’ We decided we needed a gadget that obviously had the functionality of a cell phone, because mobility is pointless without communications. The next thing we decided we needed was PDA functionality, because things like address books and e-mail need to be available on demand and easily—as they are in PDAs. Then we decided to get greedy, and wanted laptop functionality as well, because, well, why not? It would be nice to have a gadget that gave you the quick usefulness of a PDA, but when required, would let you open up Photoshop to edit the image you just clicked, or play your favourite games! And while we’re adding a laptop, we thought, “Oh what the hell, why not make it a tablet PC as well…”

We decided that GOD should be no bigger than a current PDA— after all, why would anyone want to lug around a device any larger than that in the first place? So the dimensions were fixed at a maximum of 140 x 100 x 30 mm (h x w x d). We really don’t like the idea of holding up such a gadget to our ears in order to use the cell phone functionality, so the first thing we did was add a Bluetooth headset. Ironic that we started on the bundled goodies even before we started designing the device itself, isn’t it? Now that we had settled on how it would be used as a phone, we decided we needed to have a look at the front facia. Number keys were a must, and if it was going to be a PDA as well, screen area was worth its space in gold. We decided to offer most of the front face as a screen, no buttons at all. This is an imaginary scenario, so we decided that batteries are supercharged, and can last for days, even with the screen and Bluetooth turned on all the time. Also, storage is not a problem, as the device uses a non-volatile RAM/HDD (see Atomchip).

So we designed the front display to have two modes: phone and PDA. In phone mode, the display is divided in two, with one part displaying virtual QWERTY or number keys, which can be used as normal keys thanks to touchscreens, and the other part acting as the regular phone display. Only when required, would GOD switch to PDA mode. Now the problem was that we needed a trigger for this to happen. Sure, we could just add a PDA mode virtual button, but that wasn’t cool enough. We decided that apart from adding a PDA mode switch into the phone menu, we would also add a trigger in the stylus mechanism—pull out the stylus, and GOD switches into PDA mode. Cool, isn’t it?

Gadget of Our Dreams—GOD! Here you can see GOD in phone mode. Those buttons aren’t real buttons, instead they’re just images of buttons on the touchscreen display.

Pictures, we decided, could be clicked only when in PDA mode, using the 5-megapixel camera-PDA mode offered the best area for the LCD viewfinder. Someone pointed out that we needed to think of what would happen if you got a call when in PDA mode, so we decided that the calling number would blink on one corner of the screen, and you could choose to either switch back to phone mode or just take the call using your Bluetooth headset. Simple, huh? That done, we now had to figure out a way of cramming a tablet PC into this device. Easier said than done: we had no space to work with. “What about the length?” someone asked. “What about it?” “Well, 140 mm isn’t bad for a monitor’s width, settle for a small display… better than nothing.” OK.

So GOD would flip open on a hinge attached along its length—much like Nokia’s Communicator series. The whole inside face would be made of a foldable display. When half flipped open, GOD would function as a laptop, again using one half of the display as a virtual keyboard, and the other as a 140 x 100 mm screen. Somewhat like a tablet PC in laptop mode. In order to convert GOD to full tablet mode, all you need to do is open it up fully, at which point, GOD automatically converts to a 200 x 140 mm tablet PC—switching display orientation. We had our share of arguments, especially over the small display when in laptop mode. One other option that seemed to make sense was not to have an intermediate laptop mode (with GOD flipped half open). Instead, use Bluetooth-enabled eyewear to project a virtual screen, and use GOD’s internal touchscreen display as a keyboard instead. This would keep users from having to squint to find icons on the tiny desktop! It’s already possible—there were no drawbacks in terms of technology. We decided that GOD was, well GOD, and could do all the above. Besides, we now got to include a cool pair of virtual display goggles in the bundled accessories! Apart from the odd dreamer-geek who screamed for a 3D holographic display, most of us were satisfied with the results.

When GOD is opened, it converts into a decent sized tablet PC (200 x 140 mm). When opened, it can also be used as a keyboard along with the virtual display eyewear

The representation of a pair of virtual display spectacles shown here are not really
far-fetched. In fact, they already come in all shapes, sizes and display resolutions!
We’re just predicting that they’ll be designed to look cooler and become a fad!

That was about it. We had included everything we could think of, and it didn’t take us more than a few hours—if only production lines were as easy to calibrate as our imaginations!

Now that we’d made GOD, we needed to package it, and that included a specification list. Here’s what we came up with:

Hardware
2 GHz CPU
250 GB non-volatile RAM/HDD
X850 XT/6800 GT GFx
100 x 150 front OLED touchscreen display
240 x 160 internal OLED foldable touchscreen display
Software Bundle
Windows / Linux Tablet PC OS
Handwriting recognition
Driver CD
Features
128-channel polyphonic ringtones
Bluetooth / Wi-Fi / Gigabit Ethernet
5-megapixel digital / Web camera
Unlimited address book / SMS / MMS storage
Palm / PocketPC functionality
And much more….

As for GOD’s price, we decided people would definitely be willing to pay even up to $5,000 for this dream gadget. Every good thing has to end sometime, but as we reached the end of this article, we decided that our dream hadn’t ended… in fact, it was just beginning—thanks to some great work being done by research labs and scientists around the world. The reason we kept it believable—imagining only the use of technologies that exist, or, at most, are under development—is because GOD is not fictional! Let’s keep our fingers crossed and just hope that this ‘Dream’ becomes a reality in the coming year.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, 2008