14 DAY TRIAL // Korean manufacturer Samsung has recently unveiled a Braille mobile phone that is meant to offer visually impaired users a way of sending and receiving text messages from their friends and loved ones.
The handset, dubbed 'Touch Messenger' was designed by Samsung Design China, based in Shanghai and it targets more than 9 million visually impaired people in the country. A successful result of Samsung's global design strategy, the product aims to enable the visually impaired users to send and receive Braille text messages.
It is a product that was developed to be suited for local needs and its features were planned by obtaining inspiration from local markets in countries worldwide. While manufacturers race to develop phones that will generally be suited as fashion accessories or a high-tech toys, it is quite nice to see that sometimes they also focus on devices that can be helpful and quite useful for people.
The Touch Messenger comes with a 3 x 4 button grid keypad and a lower Braille screen that can be used to read the text messages received. While there is no information at the time being on when this product will be released, it is expected to dramatically boost the quality of life for visually impaired people, whose number has reached 180 million worldwide.
According to Samsung, this product is regarded as a demonstration of the company's future design direction, "human-oriented high-tech products". Recently, Samsung has also announced that it is going to be very selective when choosing new markets for its handsets and is not intending to provide cheap entry-level phones, but more of 'luxury versions' of cheap phones. So, while Samsung is also focusing on profit and trying to spice up the prices on their regular, entry-level devices, it's nice that at the same time they are also interested in providing products that help users.