14 DAY TRIAL // The first company that seems to be really interested in the environment - Nokia - conceived a new Eco Sensor Concept mobile phone. Last week the Finnish handset manufacturer presented its new 'green' vision in the form of the Nokia 3110 Evolve version, a mobile device with bio-covers made from more than 50% renewable material. This time Nokia Research Center supported by designers found a new way to reduce our environmental footprint.
The futuristic concept will help you stay connected with friends, as well as with your health and local environment. There's also the option to share all this information with other users, thus increasing the global environmental awareness.
At this stage I believe that technical specifications of the device are not that important, as long as it will be viable and will help with the environment, but I'm sure that Nokia will make it suitable.
Anyway, the concept consists of two parts, a wearable sensor unit that can sense and analyze your environment, health and local weather conditions, and a dedicated mobile phone. The sensor unit should be worn on a wrist or neck strap made from solar cells that will also provide power to the sensors. The mobile phone will be in constant contact with NFC (near field communication) and RFID (radio frequency identification) technologies, which will relay information from the sensors to the phone or to other devices that support RFID technology.
The material used in the design will be renewable and/or reclaimed, and the technologies used inside the phone, as well as the sensor unit will be of a low power consumption class. Moreover, the user will be able to choose which sensors he would like to have inside the sensing device, which means that it will be fully customizable according to the user's needs and desires.
The mobile phone will benefit from a wide range of services, especially built upon the environmental data collected from such a device. These services can range from personal health monitoring and improvement to large-scale collective efforts to promote sustainable lifestyle choices.
This may seem a Utopian vision of what mobile industry can do in the future, but if Nokia cannot make it come true, then who can?
