NIMble Desk Phone: Land Lines Of The Future

As far as independent people go, it seems the younger you are the less chance there is that you have a home phone land line. More and more people are using their cell phone as their home phone number, too. Why not since you always have it with you and it’s always on?

I have to say that there has been a time or two when I wish I had a landline. No cell signal. Lost my phone. Can’t find my phone. Battery dead. Can’t find my charger. You know how it goes… and this is the first thing I thought of when I saw the NIMble created by Touch Revoluion.

And that’s EXACTLY what Touch Revolution intends for NIMble to be:

“Our first prototype device is a desk-phone form factor with a 7” screen. Looking at the great touch smart-phones out there, we thought to ourselves “wouldn’t it be great if our home phone did all of that stuff and synchronized with contacts, calendar, and email?”

So, we put together a desk phone form factor with Android, and Voila! Wifi and Bluetooth capable, this device makes calls and is a fully featured answering machine that can even email your messages to you as you get them.

Pretty awesome concept, right? You’ll have access to all the features that Android does… applications, games, email, pictures… we’re pretty sure you’re familiar with the possibilities of Android by now. Stick the NIMble on your desk and you’re ready to go.

Here are the NIMble Desk Phone Specs from the Nimble Spec Sheet PDF (and rewritten by AndroidGuys):

• Main Processor Minimum –  600MHz StrongARM
• Memory 128 MB DDR RAM, 512 MB NAND Flash
• Expanded Storage SD Card Slot
• Screen DIMENSIONS 4.3”, 7”, 10”
• Resolution 480 x 272, 800 x 480 and higher
• Touch Sensor Type Multi-Touch Projective Capacitive Glass Surface
• Connectivity 802.11 b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, USB 1.0/2.0, Ethernet
• Audio Stereo Speakers, Stereo Headset Jack, Directional Microphone,
• Bluetooth™ 2.0/2.1 + EDR stereo (A2DP) range of 10 meters
• Camera 2MP CMOS Camera, 15fps full resolution video, 30fps 1MP video

Personally, I think one of the most interesting to note is the connectivity options… there are a bunch. And the reason I find this so interesting is because an Android-based Home Device like the NIMble could eventually become the multimedia portal that controls lots of different appliances in our house.

From the TouchRev Blog we see founder, Mark Hamblin say:

“The types of touch interfaces that started with mobile phones will become the standard for electronics devices of all sorts – in the home, at the office, in the car – virtually anywhere people directly interact with technology.  These devices will have a variety of capabilities, features, and form factors – WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, accelerometers, haptic feedback, small screens, large screens, integrated, stand-alone, portable, … the list goes on.”

If these types of devices become staples in the household, appliance makers and other companies would have a huge incentive to create ways to control them through the device. For example, you could press a button on your NIMble desk phone in the theoretical future to:

• Make you a pot of coffee
• Let the dog in the sliding door, showing you video of the dog coming in
• Control you home entertainment center
• Change brightness/dim of lights up/down or on/off
• Start or turn out your fireplace
• Check to see what lights in your huge house are on/off
• Check to make sure all your appliances are off before you leave
• Start your car remotely to heat it up
• Act as a baby monitor
• Use it to control your home security system

The results are truly endless and I just spouted off a bunch that initially came to my head. It would clearly take awhile to get to this point because you would FIRST need for Android to garner widespread use before it becomes monetarily attractive for appliance/device makers to make Android enabled extensions.

I take that back. Seeing as how devices like the iPhone and Palm WebOS will also allow for custom applications and connect via Bluetooth, WiFI, etc… all would potentially be capable of controlling each device. The adoption of these Next Generation Smartphone OSes is what we really need.

Apparently the NIMble will be available in several different form factors. Here is a concept picture of some possibilities, although these are far from definite:

The first NIMble devices are said to be coming this September and will cost around $300. Of course, that is unless you plan on signing some sort of mobile service contract when you purchase the device. One more picture for ya:

Lastly, we’d like to remind you that the NIMble touchscreen was developed by the Product Design Lead for the original iPhone… meaning it will probably rock.