iCam + iPhone 5 Concept Is a Ripoff, Says Turkish Designer

Remember that design by Antonio DeRosa who envisioned an interchangeable-lens camera + iPhone 5 called the iCam? (pictured left) Well, it appears it’s not as original as we may have initially thought.

In fact, according to Zeki Ozek, it’s a total ripoff.

Zeki is Turkish designer with more than 15 years of experience. He’s also a bit of an industrial engineer, which means he doesn’t just conceptualize stuff - he downright creates it if he feels it’s doable. Suffice to say he’s got some Jony Ive in him.

Recently, Zeki stumbled upon my piece on Antonio DeRosa’s iCam + iPhone 5 concept. He wasn't too pleased with it.

“The camera is a copy (even the name) of my Red Dot Design Concept 2011 finalist design iCam which was featured by Wired, Gizmodo, The Wall Street Journal and on several magazines,” Zeki said.

So I did what any journalist would do in order to validate Zeki’s claims: search the web.

Seconds later, I found that Zeki’s iCam design was indeed accepted as a candidate for the prestigious Red Dot awards. Most importantly, it was in the media long before DeRosa had published his design.

Zeki’s original description: “By the time phones become more intelligent, their photo capabilities can not be better by the physical limits. This design by Zeki Ozek, suggests connecting iPhone at the back of camera with 30 pin connector. With an app, you can do anything a camera do itself by the phone.”

Some of the key features Zeki enumerated:

 - Use real lenses
 - Use the CCD or CMOS of new body instead of 5MP iPhone CMOS sensor
 - Use optical zoom
 - Save your photos directly to phone, to an ftp address, share or mail them.
 ( This will be faster than any SD card.)
 - Record better hd videos or video call with better videos
 - Edit your photos with any app, use iCam app for camera setup.

We can all agree the two works are pretty much identical, from a design and functional standpoint to the actual name. Here’s Zeki’s concept below.



Which begs the question: why didn’t DeRosa Google ‘iCam’ before naming his work?

Anyway, I will admit that the Italian designer achieved a much more Apple-ish concept, and there are some other particularities there that differ from Zeki’s design.

However, the basic idea is the same, and, by this account, Zeki should take full credit for envisioning the first iCam.

What do you guys think?