What Will Mobile Phones Be Made Of In 2015

Forget processor speeds for a moment, forget how fast a device can go, what you’ll be able to do with the software and how most devices in the future will promise to be a gateway to another world.

And its good news to see that just what your mobile phone is made of is at the top of designers lists, green mobile phones could be standard in the future.

But just what will the mobiles of the future going to be made of? Glass, carbon fibre, metal, plastic or maybe a new material we’ve yet to use are all possibilities that we can think of, but what about the people that actually do this stuff for a living.

Who are designing the gadgets of tomorrow; what materials are they playing with at the moment?

“Whenever you design a new product, there are four areas you look at; Size, Eco, Performance, and Magic”, Claude Zellweger, creative director of industrial design agency One & Co.

“Bio plastics will probably be the buzz word in 2015”, claims Zellweger pointing to the use of materials made from organic, bio-degradable materials.

The Samsung Reclaim is made using bio-plastics It’s a trend that has already started. In 2009, Samsung launched the Samsung Reclaim on in the US. An affordable smartphone, its biggest claim to fame is that the casing is made from Sweetcorn. No you can’t eat it when you’re in a tight spot, but it does mean that it will degrade when it heads to the landfill at the end of its life. But our gadgets aren’t going to be made just out of foodstuff. Metal will still play a big part, using a single piece of machined metal giving the devices both structural strength and the ability to shed unnecessary casing elements.

Crack the age old battery issues and eventually, Zellweger believes, you could have a phone that’s as thick as a piece of paper made out of paper, sadly that’s not within the next 5 years. Hinting that the throw away culture will come to an end, Zellweger also believes that our gadgets of the future will be made with a more ecological footprint in mind, and for phones that means using materials that have a greater durability, with inners that can be upgraded.

It’s a logical step; with phones being able to get more memory or a faster processor rather than the need to completely replace the handset as the shift towards software continues to drive the industry. Interacting with your phone, your camera or your internet tablet will, over the next 5 years, change drastically as we go beyond touch and embrace the possibility of a shape-shifting future.