This Smart Mini Projector is literally the size of a VHS Tape

Posted on 18/04/2019 by Sarang Sheth

You know you’ve come far when you can actually measure progress… like physically measure it. The iPod, when it launched, was roughly the size of an audio cassette, and it held almost a 1000 times more songs than the cassette ever did. The Konka Smart Mini Projector concept shows off a projector that’s about the size of a VHS tape, fitting an entire movie experience into the palm of your hand.

The Smart Mini Projector was created as a concept by Shenzhen-based designer and Konka’s industrial Design Director ‘c www.h’, and highlights how far we’ve come in the past few years. Konka, virtually a pioneer of television technology in China, has its own line-up of pocket projectors, and the Smart Mini Projector is poised to be the sleekest and most advanced of the lot, with an in-built smart interface, controlled by the projector’s own remote control. The projector comes with its fair share of ports, including a USB, Type-C, HDMI, SD Card Reader, and headphone aux, and has a press-to-activate base that lets you adjust the projector’s angle for optimal viewing… and given its incredibly compact size, the projector can be carried around with you, giving you a great viewing experience wherever you go because Netflix on a 6-inch screen is absolute blasphemy.

Designer: c www.h

A Nostalgia-Creating Smart Speaker!

Posted on 25/03/2019 by James Hoare

We have smart-home technology coming at us from all angles now, as its popularity and presence is ever increasing. However, this product still manages to stand out from the sea of competitors, as it takes a rather retro approach to smart-design.

The smart-screen speaker references the form of the original portable televisions; the blocky, angular form with the prominent control dials and two-tone finish was a familiar sight in homes of the 1970s, and now it has been brought into the modern-day! Sitting in place of the television screen is an LCD display that shows all the information that you could need!

The blocky form has been treated to some carefully considered finishes that have been implemented to break up angular form; fabric covers the majority of the device, only to be broken by the façade which has been finished in a matte plastic. Flashes of color can be found on the dial and logo, which ties the whole product beautifully together.

Designer: Wanheng Chen of Sichuan Konka Smart Technology

How do you design smartphones for teens?

Posted on 12/03/2019 by Sarang Sheth

There are some parents who believe in limiting their child’s access to sufficiently advanced tech. Technology empowers, but it also means a lot of things. You can lose your privacy, your data, end up on wrong parts of the internet, and just be exposed to something you’re not ready for. For teenagers, that can be a pretty damaging experience. Especially considering Facebook was actually caught paying teenagers to spy on them just a month ago. I don’t blame parents for wanting to be connected to their children but worrying about the price of that connection.

This is U18. It’s a bare-basics phone that your child will probably not like, but then again, teenagers often don’t know what’s good for them, right? It allows you to make, answer, and reject calls, add and remove callers, and call your dad, mom, or set up a group call for parents/siblings. It even has a WeChat button that’s probably limited to reading texts, and a voice-command button that lets you tell the phone who you want to call.

Flip the phone over and it has a camera for video calls (there’s also a secondary front facing camera), and even a panic button for sending SOS signals to your emergency contacts.

The phone doesn’t have an OS that harvests and sells your information, or an internet browser that uses cookies, or apps like Google, Facebook, and Amazon that create dossiers on your personal information and preferences. It does the job of a phone, and provides a feature that’s essential to the parent/child relationship… the feature of communication.

Designer: c www.h (Konka)

Konka Expose 970 hands-on

Posted on 11/01/2013 by Brad Molen

Konka phones rarely (if ever) grace our desks at home, but the company certainly makes a solid effort to show them off to the masses at trade shows like CES. The latest device featured at Konka's booth is the Expose 970, which offers a 4.5-inch qHD IPS screen, dual-core 1GHz unspecified CPU, Android 4.0, 8MP rear camera and 2MP front-facing cam. We took a few minutes out of the last day of the show to stop by and peek at the 970, and our experiences are just about the same as what we anticipated: the qHD display was clear and bright, the screen was actually quite responsive and the processor seemed to perform pretty well for a lower-end dual-core. The Kanzi UI is pretty easy to figure out -- the icons are very reminiscent of what you'd find on Meizu's Flyme OS. The phone is a little thicker than we'd like to see, and the back cover is definitely on the glossy end of the fingerprint magnet spectrum. If curiosity gets the best of you, head below to scope out a few images of the latest Konka.

Gallery: Konka Expose 970 hands-on

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Konka tries to differentiate with familiar-looking Kanzi 3D UI

Posted on 06/06/2012 by James Trew

Some phone makers carve their own path, others ride on their coattails. Konka, however, somehow carves its own coattails, and we admire the ingenuity. The Shenzhen-based mobile maker, known for its familiar designs and logo font, has just announced that, going forward, its smartphones will be using the 3D Kanzi UI from Rightware -- as formally seen on ZTE handsets. So does this complete the trifecta of design flattery? The Kanzi interface can be seen in action in the video after the break, but if you weren't sure how 3D it was, then there's a PR after that too, which might mention it. Just a few times.

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Konka tries to differentiate with familiar-looking Kanzi 3D UI originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jun 2012 06:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Konka W900 hands-on

Posted on 10/05/2012 by Joseph Volpe

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, consider Konka the number one practitioner of that "craft." The company, (in)famous for its OEM-copycatting ways, has set up a booth here at CTIA 2012, letting us get some up close and personal time with its W900. The HTC-esque handset, previously released at this past Mobile World Congress, is yet another in a line of underwhelming Android offerings that subsists on design without delivering on performance. Although, the phone's official spec sheet lists it as running Ice Cream Sandwich, the build we encountered was actually that of Gingerbread 2.3.6 -- a very buggy version, at that. So, don't let your eyes deceive you, what you're seeing on the homescreen is simply a third-party launcher made to ape ICS' more streamlined UI. Beneath that 4-inch WVGA display lies quadband GSM (850, 900, 1800, 1900) and WCDMA (2100) radios, VGA front-facing / rear 5-megapixel cameras, in addition to support for WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth. Unfortunately, the company couldn't confirm what processor's powering this lackluster affair. But no matter, this is one uneven device you can safely ignore.

Gallery: Konka W900 hands-on