Samsung takes our intrepid editor to its design facility in Seoul, and I get to meet the woman who designed the Ultra Smart F700. Where do the designers get their inspiration?
Editor's note: Part 1 of this feature series can be found here.
Inspiration
You might think the phone designers get their inspiration from clichéd sources. Pebbles in a stream (okay, that one's true). Trees and bodies of water (okay, those are true, too). You'd be mostly right, but don't expect to see your friendly neighborhood designer swinging by the beach. Instead, designers research a product's target audience, and come up with a visual representation of the target before work begins. So, it might not be a pebble, but it is probably a picture of a pebble. It might not be the ocean, but it is a bowl of water that inspired the F700.
So says the product's designer, whom I met on an all-expenses paid tour of Samsung HQ in Seoul, Korea. The F700, codenamed "Q-Bowl", which we know to be the Ultra Smart phone, missing in action since the beginning of this year, is finally making its way out of the design center and into European hands. U.S. availability, as always, will be up to the carriers.
Through an interpreter, the designer told us that touching the F700, which has a larger touch-screen display, should be like touching your fingers to the surface of a bowl of clear water. Preferably, a pretty bowl. Then, Samsung played us some New Age sounding music designed to relax us and stimulate alpha waves. Seriously, it was part of a new Korean-only audio user interface, combined with sound and light therapy, for wellness of being.
A perfonal touch
It's good to know someone is looking out for us. After yesterday's factory tour, during which we were impressed by how much time each brand new phone spends in an employees hands before shipping, we were happy to find another, personal touch at Samsung. Or maybe we were just enthralled by descriptions of smooth water, and comparisons between the rungs on a stalk of Bamboo and the soft minimalism of the SGH-U600. Look at them together, Samsung might be onto something.
We asked the designer what we could expect in five years time, or ten years, and she honestly didn't know. Her projects are usually two years long. What can we expect in two years? She wouldn't say, but she does see internet connectivity as a driving force in the future of cell phones. Most interestingly, her favorite phones, and the ones she created for Samsung of which she is most proud, are simple, stylish phones, not overburdened with features.
Then I nailed her with the iPhone question. Weren't these phones released suspiciously close together, the iPhone and F700? Poppycock! She exclaimed, though my Korean is rusty, so I could be wrong. Touch screens were already on the way. Larger LCD screens were becoming the norm. Touch replacing buttons, done and done. And, to avoid further comparison, the "Q" in "Q-Bowl" stands for QWERTY.
Next time, on infoSync . . .
In the next couple of days, I'll be leaving Samsung, but I still have plenty to write about. I'll be posting my hands-on experiences with the SGH-i450, as well as the plethora of cool phones I saw at the AnyCall store and E-Mart shopping center. I'll also be diving into a reader's question about the difference in sound quality between the i450 and the new Serenata phone, both of which use some B&O tech for sound. Then, next week, it's off to CTIA Wireless 2007 in San Francisco. Anyone have a cure for jetlag?
Read on in Part 4 of this feature series.
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