Shape - The round mobile device (discs)

One advantage with a round all-in-one mobile device would be the ability to load media content from discs such as CD:s, DVD:s, Blu-ray etc. Just insert the disc into your device, and you're ready to consume the media content. Just like an ordinary portable CD player. I guess you could have a disc player in a rectangular device as well. But the round one would be optimal when it comes to minimization of a device's size.

Shape - The round mobile device

I have to start somewhere. Why not explore shapes? So, in the name of being exhaustive, lets start with the circle. Why would you need a round mobile device? I don't know. It sounds ridiculous, I know. But think of it this way: If the human race faced extinction unless we all used round mobile devices, then what would we do? Create one of course! How would it work? Are there any advantages with a round mobile devices compared to a rectangular one? Let's see...What other things are round? Well, the clock of course. Lets take a look at the clock.

It measures time. It's a metaphor we're very used to. Time goes round and round. A day is a single rotation of earth with respect to the sun. How could we apply this metaphor to a round mobile device? Well, the obvious answer is the ordering of things by time. All of our applications today such as the e-mail inbox, the SMS messages received to our cell phone, uses a list. The last message received comes at the top of the list. It's a stack of messages. It works quite well. Can you beat the list? What if you could steer the circle somehow using your finger to move in time back and forth among your messages. On the outside frame of the device? Inside the device, like an Ipod? What if a certain span of the circle would represent a time unit such as a day or a week. So, in order to find all messages from one week ago, you would rotate the circle the same distance as you would to find other messages from one month ago. The circle would just be in different "period modes", such as the "week mode". Maybe this circle steering could produce narrower lists, such as all messages two weeks ago? But would that beat the list we're used to? I don't know. But it might work better for other types of messages we will receive everyday. Maybe the switching between "period modes" will be difficult to manage. But I guess it could be done. The idea of a round mobile device needs to mature in my head and explored even further . It may not be convenient to have a round thing in your pocket. But on the other hand, who says we have to carry our mobile devices in our pockets? To be continued...