Blu wearable phone: a joke or a dream?

There are so many new and unique things in the field of science and technology that we can’t keep up with them. A few days ago, the science and technology circle was once again dominated by a wearable phone called Blu. Today, I want to talk to you about this phone. Although it has landed on the crowdfunding website, is this ideal a reality?

Blu

Regarding Blu, I think it is troublesome to describe it in too many articles, so you can understand it by looking at the pictures. To put it simply, this phone can be bent at will, that is, it can be worn on the hand, and it can also be straightened and used as a normal phone.

According to the developer, Blu uses eye tracking technology. That is, for the ring state when worn on the wrist, Blu has developed a "GO UI" that can track the user's eyes and adjust the screen display position to obtain the best reading experience. In addition, this product is waterproof, so you can wear it whether you are taking a shower or swimming. Blu also uses wireless charging technology. It is a smartphone that only supports Wi-Fi . It has no external port, so the phone is charged by wireless charging or through NFC technology.

I won’t introduce other “awesome” technologies one by one. In a word, the high-tech mobile phone of our dreams integrates all the current super “awesome” technologies.

Blu crowdfunding: a joke

In my opinion, it may take another 3-5 years for this product called Blu to truly realize the technical functions described on its crowdfunding website and enter the commercial popularization stage.

Strictly speaking, Blu was not the first to come up with this kind of mobile phone concept. The first to come up with this kind of mobile phone concept was an industrial designer, about 10 years ago, in 2005, when Nokia , the then mobile phone giant , established the " Nokia Benelux Design Awards". In that year's design competition, the Nokia 888 designed by Tamer Nakisci won.

This phone, which was called a conceptual design at the time, was a sensation. According to the design concept at the time, Nokia 888 was a mobile device designed for freedom and fun. It uses a liquid battery, supports voice recognition input, and is equipped with a flexible touch screen. It can also change its shape according to the user's needs in different occasions. It was just that it was not expressed as a wearable phone at the time, but was called a bracelet phone, which integrated various "alien" technologies and could be worn on the hand like a bracelet.

Looking back today, only 10 years have passed, and this technology phone that was once considered to be a distant future is now within reach. Later, in January 2010, Nokia applied for a patent for a flexible LCD screen; in June of the same year, Sony proposed the Nextep concept phone and released a mobile phone based on flexible screen technology through a conceptual design drawing.

In the following years, various technologies related to mobile phones based on flexible screen technology began to take shape, including circuit boards, screens, batteries and other industrial chain technologies are developing in this direction, and some substantial progress has been made in the laboratory. However, this substantial progress in the laboratory is still some distance away from commercial application.

Therefore, when Blu released this information on the crowdfunding website, I think it was more of a joke. As for why Blu was able to land on the crowdfunding website, there may be three reasons: first, the crowdfunding website wanted a high-brow joke to increase their exposure; second, the person in charge of the crowdfunding website was drunk that day; third, the staff of the crowdfunding website had limited understanding of the current level of technological development. So the joke was successful.

However, this joke didn’t last for a few days before it was terminated by the crowdfunding website Kickstarter. I don’t think there is anything wrong with Blu’s idea and conception, but the current industrial chain technology is simply unable to meet and support it. This can be seen from the following two news about related industrial chain technologies:

1. Samsung SDI launched the second-generation flexible battery at the Korea Battery Exhibition in October 2014. This breakthrough in batteries can be said to have made wearable devices the biggest winner and accelerated the replacement of mobile phones by wearable devices as the center of life. However, Samsung SDI staff said that these new batteries have not yet reached the mass production standards and need to further improve stability. Samsung's flexible batteries will be officially put into commercial use as early as in the next three years. LG's bendable battery is not mentioned. Compared with Samsung's technology, LG's is more like an early evolutionary product.

2. According to foreign media reports, LG will mass-produce flexible plastic screens that can be bent at will in July this year. The largest application area of ​​this screen is wearable devices. However, it remains to be seen whether this scroll-type display can eventually be put into the market. After all, there are still some problems with the cost, production capacity, and technical stability of OLED.

Six major problems Blu mobile phone actually faces

As you can imagine, to realize such a high-end technology as Blu, the industry chain technology faced is not just the above two, but also a series of technical problems such as chips, circuit boards, sensors, touch technology, etc. In my opinion, if Blu's vision is to enter commercial application, at least the following six issues need to be solved:

1. The sensitivity of tablet touch is still often problematic. So how to maintain the sensitivity of touch for a screen that often changes back and forth between curved and straight? This will not be a small technical problem.

2. How to make it comfortable for people with different arm thicknesses is also a practical problem. Perhaps the size problem can be solved by launching multiple specifications, but the comfort of wearing this way of bending the screen directly is also a worrying problem. Moreover, according to the weight announced by Blu on the crowdfunding website, it is 170 grams, and the weight of Apple iPhone 6 Plus is 172 grams. It is questionable whether such a heavy phone can be worn on the hand all day long.

3. According to Blu, it uses eye tracking technology to ensure the reading comfort of users. But the question is, how can this open screen worn on the hand protect personal reading privacy? When we use mobile phones in public places, some private information can be covered with hands or tilted at an angle, but how about this 360° open screen worn on the hand?

4. The most critical problem of Blu mobile phone lies in the technology of the hardware itself. On the one hand, the industrial chain technology mentioned above cannot effectively support it; on the other hand, even if these technologies can barely support it, the repeated bending during use will have a chain effect on the screen, circuit board, battery, sensor, etc. In other words, compared with the current "static" usage scenario of mobile phones, how can Blu ensure that it will not cause trouble to users in the "dynamic" scenario?

5. Compared with a mobile phone, Blu is more likely to be hit when worn on the arm, so how to protect the OLED screen is a problem. In addition, if you want to put it in your pocket when not wearing it on your hand, how can you protect its "soft" body? Not only that, you also have to ensure that there will be no ghosting or overlapping when using it in different forms.

6. Blu is still lacking one technology, which is voice recognition technology. In order to truly realize a humanized and convenient interaction method, the most important thing is to allow users to get rid of the current finger touch interaction and directly use voice to interact. This can at least ensure that it has more advantages than current mobile phones when driving.

Why is the unreliable Blu so popular?

Based on the above problems, I think that Blu's wearable phone still has a long way to go to realize its commercial value. So why does such an unreliable product attract attention and even become popular? Through this incident, I think it has at least brought us two insights about user consumption:

1. Yearning for new technology. In other words, through an event like Blu, we can see that although many technologies are not reliable, people still yearn for the changes brought about by this new technology;

2. Confidence in future technology. Judging from the popularity of Blu on crowdfunding websites, many participants do not understand the difficulty of this new technology, but they choose to believe in the power of future technology. These seemingly distant technologies are achievable in this era.

Blu, which is still unreliable, also needs support

Finally, let me talk about whether we should support this "unreliable" Blu. From both a personal and technological development perspective, I think this type of new technology needs to be supported, just as we support the development of the smart wearable industry. We cannot "hate" this type of product just because the current technology in this industry has some shortcomings. We should see that this new technology, with the support of all of us, will evolve at a speed beyond our imagination and lead us into a new era of "science fiction".

Without the support of capital, many good ideas will be strangled in the cradle; without the support of capital, many innovative ideas will lose the opportunity to explore, try and experience, and great disruptive technologies will be difficult to happen. Therefore, I think everyone needs to be more tolerant of new technologies, including the smart wearable industry, and more support is needed to support entrepreneurs to explore and innovate. The progress of these new technologies will ultimately benefit people of our time.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.