There are a lot of cell phone concepts out there, a fair amount of which are actually wood-based, but this one takes the cake. Instead of focusing on way-out-there design elements that will likely never see the light of day, this Bamboo phone actually has a patent to back it up (filed in June 2006, and published last week). The patent outlines a phone, made of Bamboo, that would be coated with titanium dioxide, zinc dioxide, or silver nano-particles to facilitate the “sterilizing, deodorizing, anti-fouling and self-cleaning” of the phone. But, rest assured, this thing has phone functions too – MP3 player, Bluetooth, camera (0.3 to 8 megapixels), and 3G.
Wow, a self-cleaning, environmentally conscious, 3G phone with an 8MP shooter?! Please, let this thing make it to production.
(Patent excerpt after the link)
An exemplary environmentally-friendly mobile phone includes a main body and a housing enclosing the main body therein. The housing is made of bamboo. The housing has an outer surface and a coating containing nanoparticles is formed on the outer surface thereof The environmentally-friendly multifunctional mobile phone is friendly to environment and users due to having functions such as sterilizing, deodorizing, antifouling and self-cleaning, internet browsing, listening to MP3, taking photographs, infrared and bluetooth transmission, wireless 3G communication, having microdrive, storing changes and so on.
[0003] Nowadays many people are concerned about the environment. Conventionally, mobile phones use metals or plastics in their construction. However, metals and plastics are not necessarily satisfying materials. For example, metals are usually expensive and plastics usually need electroplating to improve property thereof, so that mobile phones have high cost. Furthermore, these materials are prone to absorbing contamination and bacterium, which can be harmful to health of mobile phones users. In particularly, it is worth mentioning that plastics can cause environmental pollution because those plastics are not dissoluble by natural decomposition. Thus, wastes of these products are harmful to environment.
[0004] What is needed, therefore, is an environmentally-friendly mobile phone.
via: mad4mobiles