Pilotfish Ondo: A music-phone with a twistBack in August 2006, interface solutions developer Synaptics collaborated with industrial design studio Pilotfish to showcase the Onyx, a concept mobile phone that replaces the conventional keypad with a full touch interface. The Onyx never made it to market, but it raised eyebrows with its dynamic user experience. The handset subsequently bagged the red dot design award two months later.
(Credit: Pilotfish) The outfit, which has offices in Munich, Amsterdam and Taipei, aims to introduce a tactile music-editing experience on a handset based on its experience in designing professional music-editing equipment and mobile devices. Aside from the Onyx, the company previously developed concepts such as a flexible display phone together with the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan in 2008 and a multimedia notebook with a customizable input interface in 2005. Umur Sener, industrial designer for the Ondo, told CNET Asia in a phone interview: "We are doing a concept to show what's the next step for mobile phones and what it can be in the near future. We are not just talking about 20 years, but more like two to five years. The technology is getting there and that's our main goal with the Ondo." The Ondo features three detachable "sticks", each with its own OLED screen, internal flash memory, microphone and power supply. Together, they form the main touch display of the phone. When detached from the chassis, each can be clipped onto musical instruments or a person to capture audio streams. 
(Credit: Pilotfish) The housing of the Ondo will be made from a bendable material with piezoelectric properties that give it music-editing capabilities. There's also a physical fine-tune dial for the remixing of audio files. "One important thing [about the Ondo] is that because it's mobile, you have an on-the-phone network. So if you have friends who are in different cities or countries, you can get a connection and jam music with them. If you are a band, you can have one member in Asia who has the drums, another with the guitar in Europe and the vocals in the US. In the end you have tracks from people who are far away," said Sener. Pilotfish doesn't have a working prototype of the Ondo yet as the concept is still on the drawing board. But unlike the partnership with Synaptics for the Onyx, the Ondo was developed entirely in-house and the first sketches surfaced about half a year ago. The company is looking at pushing this concept into production with interested partners. 
(Credit: Pilotfish) The Ondo is targeted at amateur users and music enthusiasts. The former group is passionate about music and interested to learn how to play an instrument, while the latter has prior experience with creating music and probably plays in a band as well. It's too early to tell whether the concept will take off, but the firm envisions an ecosystem that involves telco operators, original design manufacturers (ODMs), manufacturers, technology and content providers and end-users. When asked how much a phone like this will cost, Sener said he didn't have an estimated pricing as they don't know how far the technology can go and how much it will cost. "It's a fun phone, but it's more dedicated to music and more professional [music-editing features] than what you have now, but should not be really expensive." Tags: Onyx Software, industrial design, Cell Phone, Music, multimedia
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