Here’s a phone concept I can rally behind because it seems like it pushes a good idea forward, that if implemented correctly, can make some pretty great phones. The Gravity Phone by Julien Lanoy and Jean-Francois Bozec challenges the concept of a bezel-less phone having a top and a bottom. If phones are streamlined to look exactly the same if held upwards or downwards, why can’t we just make phones that know no upside-down or right-side-up? The Gravity Phone is a redesign that embraces complete symmetry. Hold it any way and it’s the right side up. The back echoes the same philosophy too, with a camera that’s centrally located so it can be used either way. While most people would grumble about a centrally located camera, I think it’s a pretty nifty idea, because given how we currently hold our phones in portrait mode, the placement of a camera app’s shutter button is so incredibly out of thumb’s reach, it makes the app counter-productive. Shift the camera down, the hand shifts down too, and your thumb can hit that shutter button with ease.
Made to look truly seamless, the Gravity Phone takes some pretty neat design decisions. It has no home button (Android), and ditches the fingerprint sensor too, since that’s where the camera sits now. The phone therefore relies on facial identification, done by not one, but two cameras on the front. If you notice, there’s a camera on each of the bezels on the top and bottom, allowing the phone to be held in any orientation. To make the phone just a bit more unique, its side edges are touch sensitive too, allowing you to scroll without having your finger on the screen, blocking the content you’re reading. Speaking of the screen, Gravity implements the 3D screen feature we saw with Amazon’s Fire phone. How does it do that? Using the two front facing cameras to gauge and depth sense your face and point of vision!
If only more designers made concept phones with this kind of attention to detail!
Designers: Julien Lanoy & Jean-Francois Bozec.
