LG’s Award-Winning Laptop-eBook Concept
I’m a total sucker for great design. Even something as mundane as a laptop computer which for the most part is much like the bicycle in terms of its lack of ground-breaking innovation over the last decade or so. So when a big company like LG wins a Red Dot design award for a creative concept, I definitely take notice. While LG has pushed the design envelope in areas such as household appliances, they’ve really done nothing of note in the consumer electronics niche, until now.
So what exactly is this concept? It’s a laptop PC, with some really innovative features and a stunning aesthetic appeal. For starters, the screen uses OLEDs instead of your garden variety LCD display. OLEDs use less power than LCDs, and OLEDs require no frame around the image so the display literally bleeds right to the edges, very cool! OLEDs will eventually do to computers what HDTV is doing for television. Everybody is going to want an OLED display at some point down the road when they begin mass producing these at a semi-affordable price. LG’s ‘laptop of the future’ runs on clean fuel – methyl alcohol – which is stored in a transparent cylindrical hinge. In addition, the keyboard itself is also one big OLED panel, which is basically the same technology that can be found on LG’s Chocolate Phone.
Overall, this looks like a pretty polished concept from LG. There is absolutely no timetable for taking this laptop into production due largely to the current cost of some of the technologies they have earmarked for this model. However, being among the 12 “best of the best” winners for this Red Dot award is a major coup for LG as only 2 big corporations managed to take home an award. The other 10 winners were individual designers who don’t have the same organizational and corporate constraints placed on them or their designs. Interesting stuff, and hopefully things like clean fuels and more OLEDs will slowly start to creep into mass production electronics before too long.
via [Engadget]
Short URL: http://gadget.ca/mxw
