FRIEZE ART FAIR NEW YORK 2012
MILAN 2012: SALONE INTERNAZIONALE DEL MOBILE
MILAN 2012: SATELLITE EXHIBITIONS
MILAN 2012: BRERA DESIGN DISTRICTA couple of years ago I was lucky enough to interview Younghee Jung, the globetrotting Nokia ethnographer whose job is to research how people use their mobile phones all over the world. While doing preparatory research, I came across footage of Jung doing a presentation where she explained how an Indian girl from an impoverished rural region used her phone: "The mobile phone is the only electronic device in her house," Jung explained, "and she records TV or radio from outside with her phone so she can replay them at home."
If a cell phone manufacturer tried to sell us "rich-world" folk on using our phones to record other people's TVs to watch back in our apartments, we'd probably scoff; similarly, though Vladimir Pavlenko's Aylampa concept has been decried as "impractical" by the TUAW blog and others, I actually think it's a great idea for developing countries.
Pavlenko's concept is a flexible phone holder that plugs into power and turns your phone into a lamp. While that's not practical for the vast majority of you reading this blog, for those in this world for whom a mobile phone is their only electronic appliance, I think this makes perfect sense, pre-supposing a power supply (and admittedly using a not-so-high-end phone).
Pavlenko, if you're reading this, please do drop us a line; apparently your name is common and I was unable to locate your main portfolio site.
Comments
So... those without electricity can now have a $500 lamp, Brilliant... not really.
Nonsensical!
Why shouldn't children have proper lamps? If the home has an electrical outlet to charge a phone, and to plug this nonsense in, why not plug in an LED lamp, and be done with it?
It's true people use cellphones as lights during power cuts and black-outs, but thats only for a very short while. Imagine what you're doing to the cellphone battery by keeping the display on for so long: quicker discharges and recharges will kill that battery, requiring multi-hour charges for one hour of use. So you'll need to buy a new battery. And so on.
Plus, that the rendering shows an iphone! Do you know how much iphones cost in 'developing' countries? and what other phone is exactly that size? The charging dock of each phone make is different, too.
Enough. Developing countries don't need this, thank you very much.
You can't be serious. There's just so many obvious things wrong with your rationale for this concept* it hurts my mind.
*Including: 1. mobile phones make shit lights, 2. you still need to power the phone [especially if it's the over-power-hungry iPhone], 3. you can't use the phone while using it as a light, 4. who owns a phone, but not a lamp anyway?, 5. the holder either would need to be adaptable to hold different phones which would make it more complicated and expensive, 6. this is just another piece of disposable iPhone crap that fan-boys lap-up and will clog-up landfill in a few years, 7. On the other other hand though, to make this affordable to people in developing countries, it would need to be made in developing countries, so after their 18hr day at the injection-molding factory pumping out iPhone paraphernalia, they could go home and read for 5 minutes before they get their 4 hrs of sleep for the night.
Is this supposed to be "design thinking"?
I love this! Turn your iPhone into a lamp. I use it all the time as a flashlight when I'm going to bed at night. Why not use it as a lamp full time?
I remember one time when I was in my dark basement lighting my way through the room with my large-screened cell phone. In the process of crossing the room, I managed to stub my toe in the darkness despite my cell phone light. Man did it hurt.
Most Africans have real problems and real obstacles to avoid. Like militant rebels bent on genocidal destruction. Let's hope their cell phones are bright.