Mobile design competition

Royal College of Art students were set the challenge of designing a mobile phone to "outperform, outsmart, and outmanoeuvre everything on the market".

One of three winners in the competition, sponsored by 3, was Vase. The phone starts "as an empty vessel", with features installed gradually as the owner decides what they want.

Vase's designers say no instruction manual is needed, with users learning to operate the phone as it is built up gradually with functions "perfectly suited" to their needs.

Another winner - the Teiko, designed for children - includes games, parental controls, and GPS technology to enable parents to monitor their children's movements.

Teiko allows children to access information in places like museums and zoos. The shock-proof and waterproof phone also features a retractable earpiece that children cannot lose.

Owners of the Free Key assign the functions of the 40 keys beneath a flexible LCD screen, making the winning design "unique to each user... intuitive to use and hard to replace".

[source : BBC]