AdZero, the Android Phone made out of Wood, Gets More Details
Remember that Android phone made out of wood that popped up on all the major tech sites earlier this year? Wondering what happened to it? Well, the manufacturer, AD, seems to still be working hard on getting a functioning unit out by the end of this year. In the meantime, we spoke to one of the reps over at AD recently about what else we might expect from this uniquely materialed device and here’s what we found out.
Design
According to the rep, the device is going to be made out of a single piece of sandwiched and processed Bamboo, which for anyone concerned about the environment, is a fast growing, sustainable material (unlike other woods). Now, as much as the wood seems like a nice, natural progression in material to some, it wasn’t the first material they went with. Some of the original designs included using copper, aluminum, and even Corian (a solid material produced by DuPont for kitchen countertops). Eventually though, the designers settled on bamboo because it just “had the most magic”.
Besides bamboo just feeling right, it also seemed to work well for a phone oddly enough. The wood seemed to have no effect on signal quality, performance, or even heat. During one 10 hour test of constant video playback the wooden construction of the phone only warmed up slightly according to AD.
A question we immediately wanted to know was what happened if I spilt a few drops of water on the wood, does it have a sealant of some sort or would it soak into the bamboo and then into the internals of the device? AD’s response was that the device’s wooden body is just as waterproof as a plastic version so a few drops here and there will make no difference (but, of course, keep it as far from water as possible as with any other electronic).
Specifications
As for the internals of the device, AD won’t say. Trying to find out even if it will have a quad core processor elicited the generic response of, “[We] can’t say…” but they did manage to at least say that “the phone will boast some impressive specs sitting along the high end market price/spec wise” which leads us to believe that in order to compete in Q4 of 2012 it’ll have a quad-core processor and some significant RAM specs as well.
Software
When looking at the initial pictures of the device, we noticed that it had the generic hardware buttons for Android located underneath the screen, which concerned us. Would the device lose those by the time it is released in favor of the no button Ice Cream Sandwich look? Would it keep the buttons and have ICS on it as well? Would they just go with Gingerbread instead?
According to our conversation, it seems they will be launching with Ice Cream Sandwich on the device (it would be hard to imagine them not launching the device with ICS on it at release considering more and more devices will be getting ICS by years end and Jellybean is supposedly scheduled to be unveiled before then as well).
As for keeping the buttons or not, AD did say that they will be running their own custom UI on the device called ADAOS and had this to say because of that. “We are testing both setups to see which configuration works best with ADAOS. Our main priority is user intuitiveness, if either setup compromises this, we will not run with it.”
Unfortunately, that doesn’t help us with what might happen to those buttons and, even more disappointing, confirms that they are going the way of the other manufacturers and skinning Android (which most of our readers will know we aren’t the biggest fans of). While the representative does agree that ICS looks and functions well without a custom skin and that they will only minimally skin it using ADAOS, we still have yet to see this ADAOS so until then guess we’ll just have to hope their definition of minimal is the same as ours.
Release/Feedback
AD will launch the AdZero sometime in Q4 of this year most likely and will originally launch in the UK with other undisclosed countries to follow depending on UK sales figures etc one would assume.
As for feedback, AD is trying to work as closely with consumers as possible, hosting live UStream Q and A’s as well as reaching out to potential users for other comments and concerns.
Anyone think a high spec wooden phone might be right up their alley?
If spec’d and priced right…I’d buy one. But these types of devices are rarely ever seen with CDMA radios 🙁