Motorola Aura Featured At Many Gadget Sites

The new Motorola Lifestyle phone, The Aura, has had a lot of coverage at pretty much every major gadget centric website. The Phone is certainly eye catching with plenty of expensive materials used in its construction. The camera lens alone is crafted from 62-Carat Sapphire. The 16-million-color LCD screen is the focal point around which the rest of the phone pivots, revealing an anodized aluminium keypad underneath. The Screen also features a pixel density of 300 dots-per-inch, meaning it is capable of extremely fine detail. The stainless steel housing is chemically etched and has been sculpted with a design that takes almost two weeks to finish. Apparently the phone is comprised of over 700 individual parts. The phone functions are fairly standard though, supporting text messaging, e-mail, a variety of media formats, 2GB of onboard memory, stereo Bluetooth, and also featuring Motorola’s proprietary CrystalTalk technology which can substantially reduce background noise. The Aura will be available in the fourth quarter of 2008, and should be available for around $2,000 for an unlocked version. Visit Motorola for more information.

Plica Cellphone Concept

A new cellphone concept on show over at tuvie.com. The Plica is an interesting concept which combines a folding cell phone and a MID type touchscreen device. This device is named after a zoological term for the folding of a body part. The Plica features two touchscreens that can fold together like a wallet. The screens can work together, giving the user extra screen real estate. One of the touchscreens can act as a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard while the other will display what you need to see. The concept which is designed by James Piatt, could easily give the iPhone a run for its money. I'd like to see it developed further.

Microsoft Zune Phone

Microsoft are rumoured to be producing a Zune based phone. There are several sites speculating on this at the moment, including crunchgear and gizmodo, but nothing concrete in the way of any announcements from Microsoft. The problem with this kind of speculation is that it leads nowhere and is hardly newsworthy. The iPhone may be making some folks think in a me too way but I'm of the opinion that if you want to make a decent alternative to the iPhone and its competitors, it'll take some serious design thinking and innovation and a look at the few mistakes made in the design and implementation of existing models.