Concept phones are great, but they’re particularly interesting when the designer has obviously put a lot of effort into explaining how all the aspects of it would work.  It turns what can often be a flight of fancy into something that really makes you think about the construction and interfaces of the devices we choose to carry.  Qian Jiang’s Softphone concept is similar, in a way, to Nokia’s format changing Morph concept from yesterday, but with echoes of those instant pop-up tents and washing baskets: collapsing to a small, clipped fabric ring, the design uses tactile gestures – such as squeezing to answer a call – and interwoven light-emitting threads to create simple menus and controls.

Unclip it, however, and the whole thing springs open and gives room for a full QWERTY keyboard.  The earbuds are wireless (with nifty slots to fix them to the phone’s lanyard, whereupon they recharge through inductive power) and all the hardware and electronics are squashed into the clip itself.

Obviously you shouldn’t expect to see the Softphone on shelves anytime soon, but it does prompt questions about convergence devices and the adaptations they require of us (rather than them adapting to how we use them; tiny thumb keyboards are a good example of this). 

[via Yanko Design]