Created as a part of the Render Weekly Instagram Competition, this little number from Jonas Daehnert is part bookend and part Bluetooth speaker. It sits on your bookshelf, holding your books in place but also gives you the ability to listen to music, podcasts, and even audiobooks! Pretty neat, huh?
Daehnert cites Teenage Engineering as one of his points of inspiration. Taking cues from the computer-1 foldable CPU chassis, Daehnert created a similar foldable-style bookend that can be flat-packed while shipping and bent into shape by the user. The Bluetooth speaker plugs right into the metal armature, and a nifty flick-switch on the front lets you power the speaker on or off.
Assembling the Bookend Speaker is ridiculously easy and only really needs a screwdriver. First, bend the metal sheet into its bookend shape, and then screw the speaker in place using the screws and washers provided. Once you’re done, find a nice bookshelf that’s also conveniently located near a plug point and you’re ready to go! The only thing it really now needs is a dock for your Kindle and the Bookend Speaker officially tackles all three book-related experiences – paper books, audiobooks, and ebooks.
When Google launched its first smart speaker, the Google Home, in 2016, the design team spoke about how they consciously chose materials and color palettes that complemented the home, rather than being too tech-driven. The Google Home came with a woven fabric clad, and pastel color options, allowing it to occupy space in your home without commanding too much attention. The rounded forms and the lack of edginess just helped it blend in further, making the home feel smart, rather than the product within the home. Jonas Daehnert (popularly known on the internet as Phone Designer) is taking that design philosophy a step further with his Smart Cactus speaker. Designed to blend into homes by looking like a potted plant, the Smart Cactus beautifully intersects tech and decor to create a speaker that’s a perfect fit for the coffee table, the mantelpiece, or the cabinet.
The Smart Cactus comes in a cylindrical format, quite similar to other smart speakers, but resembles a Parodia cactus with a fleshy stem and a planter-base. The stem comes with multiple segments, clad in fabric to look like the cactus’ body, and ditches the spikes for light-strips that run vertically. On the top is an OLED screen that serves as a display, allowing you to interact with it through touch (something you wouldn’t really do with a cactus without thinking twice!) Conversely, you could talk to the Smart Cactus and have it respond with audio as well as ever-changing LED lights. You could ask it to read you the latest headlines, play your favorite podcast, or have it stream music (they say Beethoven really helps nourish plants!) I just wish the Smart Cactus came in a nice olive-green though!
Jonas Daehnert, better known by his online moniker “Phone Designer” usually has a reputation of being eerily spot-on when it comes to predicting phone designs before their launch… or rather, visualizing them based on personal gut-feelings and outsider rumors. Here’s what Daehnert believes the iPhone 12 Pro will look like, a thin notched design, with a flat edge around the sides, like the iPhones 4 and 5, and an incredibly slim bezel. Apple’s never been one to chase curved or ‘waterfall’ displays like Samsung and other Android makers, so that flat edge does make a fair bit of sense… after all, it’s also in keeping with the iPad Pro’s design language.
It may come as a slight disappointment to some that Apple hasn’t done away with the notch, considering they first featured it 3 years ago, in 2017. Companies like Samsung and OnePlus have even managed to move onto hole-punch cameras and retracting front-face cameras, so that notch does seem slightly antiquated, besides facial-recognition at a time when literally everyone is wearing masks outdoors feels counter-productive. Maybe Apple could put an in-screen fingerprint reader if they wanted to. It’s something we’ll have to wait to know more about.
The iPhone 12 Pro’s design retains yet another moderately visually jarring feature with the camera bump. If you can look past it, the hardware looks quite promising. The 12 Pro sports 3 camera lenses, like its predecessor, and a time-of-flight sensor (like the 2020 iPad Pro) that should help the new iPhone scan objects and environments better for more crisp computational photography, and for Apple’s ARKit. The glass back for wireless charging purposes is a no-brainer, especially considering Apple’s apparently working on the AirPower charging mat again, but what really has my heart is that beautifully minimal Apple logo that just about makes itself visible on the back.
Details at this point of time seem scant, but what this concept does suggest is that Apple isn’t planning on giving up on the Lightning connector anytime soon. Also, could this be the first iPhone with support for 5G??
Riding the wave of memes are also some pretty neat looking conceptual designs based on Tesla’s ‘polarizing’ Cybertruck design. LEGO enthusiast BrickinNick made a pretty cool replica of the truck out of LEGO bricks, and our favorite Jonas Daehnert, better known as the Phone Designer, put together a conceptual phone styled on the angular pickup truck.
Meet the Cyberphone… an indestructible mobile with a 7-inch screen and nifty stainless steel finish. Flip the phone over and it begins really looking like its inspiration. An angled design with a windscreen-esque black glass on the upper half, and a slatted lower half resembling the truck’s vaulted bed. Under the ‘windshield’ lies a triple camera setup, but what really has my eye is the nifty strip-light on the top, modeled after the Cybertruck’s headlights, that I assume works either as a flash or a notification light. Plus, extra points to the designer for rendering out this beauty on a marble surface, paying a hat-tip to the Cybertruck’s marble interiors.
Daehnert’s Flexbook concept appeared on my Instagram feed suddenly one fine morning, and I’ll admit, I paused to completely take it in. I didn’t just like the design, I loved it, because it felt almost like a eureka moment for me, because we’ve been struggling with finding a good use for flexible displays. Companies have tried them out in smartphones and failed miserably… but the Flexbook provides a refreshingly different use-case for the flexible display; and more importantly, it makes sense.
The Flexbook is like a laptop met a sandwich. Unlike most laptops, which have a two-part design connected via a hinge, the Flexbook has three parts. A main body, comprising your motherboard, electronics, ports, and keyboard… and around it, a two-part flexible screen that sandwiches the keyboard in the middle. The Flexbook can be traditionally used as a laptop with a 3:2 12.6-inch display, simply by opening it and using one half of the screen, or as a massive Wacom Cintiq-style tablet PC with a neat 4:3 17.8-inch touchscreen. This interchangeability is what makes the Flexbook such a unique laptop, because it can alternate between being a laptop and a tablet, much like the Microsoft Surface, but with the advantage of a massive 17.8 inch screen in the form factor of a 13 inch laptop.
Another win for the Flexbook is in the way Daehnert cleverly designed it. With an inward folding screen, like the Samsung Galaxy Fold, the Flexbook tends to leave a gap in its center, so as to protect the screen from breaking. That gap is reinforced by the Flexbook’s keyboard, which helps give the screen something to fold around, preventing it from creasing or damaging with overuse. Designed to look less as a limitation and more of a design feature, the Flexbook’s flexible display has a unique way of wrapping around the keyboard. It even packs a Microsoft Surface Pro-style hinge to open and close at any desired angle.
Daehnert’s Flexbook may be a concept, but it does illustrate an interesting possibility for laptops. Armed with a stylus, USB-C ports on both sides, and 4 speaker units arranged around the bezel of the screen, Daehnert’s Flexbook is a render I secretly wish was a leaked image. My only concern is the slight offset when you fold the keyboard backwards and try to rest the Flexbook on a flat surface like a table… but other than that, this might be just the best place to fit a flexible display. If anything, it should last longer too, because the average person opens their laptop less than 10 times a day, but looks at their smartphone more than 80 times a day. I should know… I’m that person.
Bigger displays mean more energy consumption, larger batteries, and sadly, bigger disappointments because the batteries fail to deliver on the promise of a 24-hour usage cycle. While they’re great for watching videos and scrolling through endless Instagram feeds, they’re difficult to use with one hand, because screens get bigger each year with shrinking bezels, but thumbs, well thumbs don’t.
The Pixel 4 Mini is the brain-child of Jonas Daehnert, or better known on the internet by his alias, Phone Designer. Probably one of the most reliable go-to’s for any phone leak visualizations, Daehnert’s renders end up looking virtually exactly like the real deal, which may debut months later. After creating a pretty remarkable rendition of the upcoming Pixel 4, Daehnert moved onto his pet project, the Pixel 4 Mini, or in other words, the phone with the promise of a great camera, and a suitably sized screen.
Daehnert’s Pixel 4 Mini is everything like the Pixel 4, except it’s palm-friendly. With an approximately 4.5 inch screen, the Pixel 4 is the iPhone 4S of the Pixel world (if you thought that was small, the iPhone 4S actually had a 3.5 inch screen). It provides all the features of a flagship, with the usability of smaller sized phones, which mean you can operate them with a single hand and not experience thumb-pain. The Pixel 4 Mini comes with the same 3-lens camera setup as its bigger brother, and if Google’s algorithms are indication, this phone should be an absolute stunner in the photography department. A smaller phone however does have its cons too. In an effort to fit all the awesomeness in, I’m assuming the Pixel 4 Mini doesn’t support wireless charging, but a fast-charger and Pixel 4 Mini’s USB-C port should do just fine. A smaller body also means a smaller battery, but there’s ways of overcoming that… for instance Daehnert’s minimal monochrome Android UI should seriously help in salvaging some battery life.
With phones becoming increasingly flat and homogeneous over the past few years, many companies like Huawei, Oppo, and OnePlus have begun resorting to CMF to create a factor of differentiation, with gradients, anisotropic reflective metallic finishes, and holographic patterns. As a fan of solid colors, it seems unlikely that Google would adopt that path, but something like this Pixel 4 concept with a carbon-fiber finish is definitely something that would look like a thousand bucks (although quite out of Google’s ball-park).
The rumored Pixel 4’s back obviously wouldn’t be made out of carbon fiber, given that it would definitely affect the phone’s ability to wirelessly charge, but Google could just as easily create a faux carbon fiber pattern in their glass/ceramic back through clever etching. The end result would look as good as a vinyl clad, giving the phone a completely new avatar, with the same body and soul! Hey Sundar, think your team can pull this off?
It’s good to see the Pixel surrender that incredible notch it managed to acquire last year. The Pixel 3 was considered the pinnacle of Google’s smartphone tech, and actually housed the best smartphone camera in 2018, but it left a lot to be desired. For starters, the Pixel 3 still had pretty thick bezels on the top and bottom, and the Pixel 3XL had a massive notch on the top, much bigger than any other notch on any other phone (Google said this was because of the wide-angle selfie camera). Based on a couple of leaks, the Pixel 4 seems to avenge its predecessor with a much cleaner design, and no ugly bezels or notches from last year! Rendered out by our friend Jonas Dähnert, aka Phone Designer, this is a pretty accurate look at the Pixel 4 and 4XL.
It looks quite similar to the Pixel 3 from last year, with perhaps the only two major exceptions being A. the screen, a nice, clean bezel-less display with a hole-punch for a camera, and B. the lack of a fingerprint sensor, which is a pretty massive indication that either the Pixel 4 has adopted facial recognition, or has opted for an in-screen fingerprint sensor, the more likely of the two.
There’s no word on what the Pixel’s tech specs will be, but if last year was any indication, this was just one of the many leaks to follow! While we do wait with bated breath for this beauty of a smartphone (which will undoubtedly click some remarkable pictures too), let’s not forget that Google’s Pixel 3 lineup isn’t over! There may be a budget version of the Pixel 3 on its way that might just, wait for it, pack a 3.5mm jack! Too bad the Pixel 4 doesn’t show any signs of one though!
YD has always had a large focus on concepts. The only way to pave the future, I believe, is to conceptualize, and we’ve seen so many products develop only years after the concepts did. So as far as they go, conceptual designs pave the way for real-world products, and they’ll always have their place on YD. Having said that, there’s no observing conceptual designs without stumbling across those made by Jonas Daehnert, or as the internet calls him, Phone Designer. Jonas’ conceptual phones range from pretty-well-chalked-out to tongue-in-cheek… although some of his conceptual designs feature rather logical details based off rumors, brought to life by his photorealistic rendering skills. We had a chance to have a word with Jonas, delving into his process, passion for phones, and what he designs apart from them. We’ve even taken a look at some of his phones we’ve featured on YD.
Yanko Design:Hey Jonas! Big fan! Tell us a little about yourself, your background, what you do…
Jonas Daehnert: Hey! My name is Jonas Daehnert, I’m a 31-year-old designer from Germany. In 2007 I started studying product design at the Bauhaus University Weimar. During this time I learned how to develop and design products. But, of course, even out of school, learning continues. Currently, I work as a freelance product and concept designer. Sometimes I design new product concepts for companies or other design agencies, sometimes I visualize their products for packaging, advertising or for presentations, like MWC in Barcelona. In my free time, I’m a natural born geek.
Daehnert’s Leather Phone imagines an era where phones are flexible, so a leather construction provides a beautifully premium clad.
YD:How and when did you venture into the “concept phone” domain?
JD: In addition to studying, I founded a video game development studio with a friend, 9 years ago. He was, and still is, an excellent computer scientist and I was able to design the graphics, sounds and game mechanics. We did a good job. But even in 2010/11, it was hard to get attention, especially when you developed apps for Windows Phone 7. To increase our downloads we were looking for a way to advertise our apps more effectively. Then I came up with the idea to promote our apps on fictional devices. As chance would have it, Microsoft revealed their first Surface devices in June 2012. One week later we presented our games on the new fictional “Surface Phone”. I’m really proud of it, because it was my first phone concept and people really liked it. We got a lot of attention. It was also the birth of the Surface Phone myth. From that point on, I started developing phone concepts in my free time.
The Surface Phone was Jonas’ first concept phone, modeled off the Surface Tablet that released in 2012.
YD:Softwares! What do you use to model and render?
JD: Like a lot of product designers I use Rhino 3D for modeling and Keyshot 7 Pro for rendering. Both applications are relatively lightweight, versatile, affordable, and easy to learn — but hard to master. They work perfectly together.
A poke at the #bendgate controversy surrounding the iPhone 6 launch
YD:How do you start with your concepts? Do you follow the rumor-mill?
JD: My first concepts just followed the rumors and as a product designer it is always a good exercise to work on fictional things for companies you have never worked for. It’s like a role playing game. You analyze their design philosophy and create new products for them, without restrictions or limitations. It’s just a typical design process with a lot of research, sketching and failures. But in the last two years I stepped back to just do some smaller stuff on Twitter, because these days I don’t see any advantage to designing smartphones under a false flag. Most companies became boring, predictable giants. The biggest topics in the last six month were notches, great cameras and the disappearance of the headphone jack. That’s it. I would like to go further and design my own visions under my own concept brand. For nearly a decade I’ve called myself Phone Designer. This doesn’t mean that I’m only focused on phones, though. Currently I’m working on a laptop concept, which will be totally unique.
The Lumia 940 was built on rumors and these incredibly realistic renders probably circulated more than the actual photos!
YD:Share some of your tips for photo-realistic renders!
JD: Of course for every render scene the quality of the 3D model, its details, textures and materials are important. But even more important is the arrangement of the 3D models, the camera and light settings. Many 3D artists make the mistake of using very low focal lengths and aggressive viewing angles in their camera settings. As a result, lots of renderings are distorted and the original character of the product is destroyed. Be more conservative in terms of camera settings and spend more time developing a sophisticated light setting to push the product characteristics. Having some knowledge about photography is really helpful, too.
The Pixel concept actually used Google’s brand colors as product lighting, creating a beautiful atmosphere for the render!
YD:Favorite phone of all time? What phone do you own?
JD: Definitely my first phone, a C35i by Siemens. It is an extremely durable phone with two weeks of battery life. And it still works, after 18 years. I’ve spent a long time with Windows Phone and I’m still a fan of the Lumia phones, especially its Fabula Design language. But Windows Phone is dead, so I switched to Android. Actually I use an old Moto G4 — it’s enough for my needs. I prefer purism and simplicity.
Jonas bid farewell to the Windows Phone in a rather humorous way. It’s pretty comical how the Windows Mobile tile-UI fits into the crucifix design too!
YD:Do you ever plan to make concept wearables like smartwatches or VR headsets, etc?
JD: I already did. A couple of years ago I designed a wristband that could have been a product by Microsoft, before they launched their first Microsoft Band. The similarities were surprising. I also created a fictional VR headset, the Google Nexus Glasses. For a real client, I’m currently designing a wearable, which will be used in the sport of boxing. It’s not released yet.
Jonas dropped his own version of Microsoft’s Band in 2014, when the watch market had just begun developing with the Apple Watch.
YD:Lastly, one thing you really wish you could change about the smartphone industry.
JD: There are over 3000 smartphone brands in the world. Each company should produce less devices per year and focus on durability, their software services and updates. Planned obsolescence generates the money. This is a problem. That’s why I really appreciate Google’s Project Treble, which tries to change the current situation. We should also think about our material choices. Using aluminum or glass for the backsides of the phones requires a lot of energy and resources that are not recyclable. We should use less glue and more screws. We have to prevent the garbage from landing in Africa. The whole industry has to change its attitude towards pollution. Finally, as a geek I say: We need more battery life.
(I couldn’t agree with you more, Jonas…)
Daehner’s Spinner Phone, also from 2014 (not inspired by the fidget spinner), explores a rotating camera module machined in metal, allowing you to click incredible photos and selfies… using the same camera.
To check out more of Jonas’ work on YD, click here.
Come October 2017 and we’ll have Google launch its second iteration of its flagship smartphone, the Pixel. Admitted it may not look anything like what we’re seeing right now, but Jonas Daehnert has an affinity for creating the most desirable phone concepts.
The Pixel 2017 concept boasts of a metal + sandstone makeover, with a vibe that reminds me of the Oneplus X. However, the Pixel comes with the dual camera, a dual flash, and no more fingerprint reader (I surmise the screen may be able to ultrasonically detect fingerprints). On the side of the phone however are 4 tiny lights that correspond to Google’s colors. I guess they work as dedicated notification lights, so you know that a red flash is for Mail, a Blue for Twitter or Facebook, Green for Messages, and Yellow for Instagram or something of that nature. It seems like a neat idea to play on the colors of Google’s brand and turn it into a functional element on a phone.
I personally love how the render lighting uses Google’s colors too, making the phone look Google-esque, rather than too metallic (which it would under white lighting). Come October and we’ll know what to expect, but until then, let’s make do with this!
