Nice
Wow, I really quite like the look of that. I hope someone involved in the design or backing knows something about designing antennae and has sense checked that this is actually viable for a usable phone.
A British student will see his bamboo blower blueprint brought to market, after backers took note of the ADzero, an eco-friendly smartphone carved entirely from the fast-growing wood. ADzero bamboo smartphone Conceived by Middlesex University scholar Kieran-Scott Woodhouse, this lignum-lined Android blower is around half the …
Keep my new bamboo phone the hell away from the pet panda!
In all seriousness, good to see bamboo making it to the tech industry, sure it's not everyone's cup of tea, but "nature's carbon fibre" is certainly starting to feature nowadays
Admittedly they've done a nice job on that handset, I'm not a great fan of wood finished products, but if they were to stain that bamboo black or other colours I reckon that phone would look ace!
"At least Gorilla glass is made in the US."
It's made in the USA and Japan. Corning started manufacturing in the latter because so many of the manufacturers that it supplies are in the Far East - shipping from North America takes too long by sea (IIRC 3 weeks) and although air freight is quicker, it's greatly eats into profits.
I'm sure the workers at the Corning factory in the US (and Japan) are better treated than the ones in Chinese bamboo processing factory.
Eco credentials of either are meaningless since most of the other components will account for >90% of pollution. Freight FROM the US to China is also almost zero cost, since all those ships and planes had to go back to China anyway.
An eco-friendly smartphone CASING perhaps but certainly not the phone. Like the person above said the battery is lithium and no doubt the phone itself is chock full of rare earths. Then there is the question of what factory it was made in and the conditions the workers are in etc. The phone is also non bio-degradeable. Eco-friendly.... hardly.
It high time someone took a leaf out of natures book and branched out like this. No doubt the nay sayers with shallow roots will bark and holler about it, but they know knot what they are talking about. That old chestnut of all mobiles needing modern materials only should be stuffed away in an old trunk forever. Some people just can't see the wood for the trees, and I for one will never be bamboozled into using a plastic case again.
Nice job reverse engineering the case dimensions. If that's really how it was done.
Manufacturers (notably Apple) tend to keep specs for their products proprietary. Too bad. The aftermarket for such mods, cases, etc. for various products could really be interesting if they'd support third parties with limited* engineering drawings.
*Not enough to knock off your own product, of course.