NEC's "Flask" fuel cell-powered mobile phone

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nec-flask-fuel-cell-mobile.jpgThe future has arrived!

Sadly, the future looks like a 1970s disposable cigarette lighter, thanks to NEC’s incredibly odd-looking Flask phone concept and its glimpse into one possible future of mobile design and power.

The screen is transparent, as are the buttons, with everything else also transparent and it all just sort of sitting there on the case. It must be using some sort of alien technology, it looks that much more advanced than anything we’ve ever seen before.

Flask is powered by some sort of liquid fuel, which no one seems to be able to understand or identify. Here at TD, though, we’re totally up-to-speed on all the latest battery/power developments and can confidently tell you that it’s a methanol fuel cell. NEC has been pushing weird fuel cell ideas like this for years.

The original Flask concept design specs are here (scroll down – the page is a bit broken), where NEC says of the Flask “Technology should be used not only to make our lives convenient but also to beautify them. Flask maintains the convenience of regular mobile phones and enclosed ultra-high-density packaging technology and fuel cell technology to express functional beauty.”

Nice idea, but god knows when methanol refuelling pods are set to roll out to branches of Carphone Warehouse.

(Via Chip Chick)

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Gary Cutlack
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