Your next computer is a children’s toy

Posted Jun 7, 2004, 9:55 AM ET by Gareth Edwards
Related entries: Cellphones, Digital Cameras, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

An eccentric and in some ways intriguing mockup from Frog Design supposedly shows us a vision of the computer of the future—a combined phone, GPS, PDA, camera and for some reason karaoke machine that reminds us irresistably of a Speak and Spell. Helpfully, it looks like the handles on the slide-out screen and keyboard could safely be chewed by a young child without harm on either side. We’re not sure how big it’s supposed to be, but it looks awfully fiddly to hold as either a phone or PDA (wouldn’t the keyboard snap off if you were holding it there to type, too?). The designers reckon it could be built in two or three years, but with flexible thin-film displays and the like coming on the scene, we expect concept models, if not the products themselves, to look nothing like the lumps of plastic we’re carrying around these days by then.