360 Folding Mobile Phone: You Can’t Fold It Enough

There is a race going on now that most of us are aware of.  It’s the race that the cell phone developers are running.  They try to stun us with their minds, and the features they come up with are the ultimate success barometer when it comes to design and usability.  We have seen our share of crazy designs through the years, but there is always something about the designs that is appealing.  For example, to have a brick phone in your backpack is even appealing if you consider the retro factor of it all.  But when we head into the smaller territories, where cell phones become as thin as your solar calculators, things get a little out of hand for my taste.

The 360 Compact Folding Mobile Phone (yup, that’s the working title of it) is a concept phone that takes the flip phone a couple of dimensions past the cool and the neat.  It’s one of those phones that when you lay eyes on it you go, “Oh that looks really nice…” but in a not so nice way.  Honestly, I don’t know what to think of it.

Is it a good concept?  Is it cool to have a phone that is thinner than the small stack of one dollar bills in my wallet?  Or, to ask the obvious question, will it break as soon as I have it in my back pocket and start walking?  With so many questions, is it then a good concept idea?  Well, if I had the real phone and tried it out, I could probably could tell you.  I guess this one is one of those phones that will probably not see the light of day, sadly.  Now when I look at it again, I even get a sense of retro Atari feel.  Hmm, maybe it is cool after all…  Designer: Baek Kil Hyun from SADI