Ultimate Product?

[DigiTan]

Here's the scenario: You have 1 day to come up with the ultimate, top-of-the-line product for your company to market. It can be a portable computer, mobile phone, PDA, mp3 player, or other portable device. Basically, you're designing the Ferrari of all products on the market. The only rules are:

(1) Cost is no object
(2) The specs have to be state-of-the-art or somewhat close
(3) Your product has to appeal to the adult & teen markets

And as part of the brainstorming, you can include brand-new technologies that have just hit the market recently like next-gen processors. Just as importantly, you can even include features that haven't been done yet -- as long as they're realistic and marketable.

Finally, if you already use or know a top-of-the-line machine; feel free to post up your specs and other cool features. Let's get the ideas rolling!

[edit]
This scenario is mostly centered on the mobile phone market, but other device ideas are useful.

[Jim e]

Laptop, Notebook, PDA/Blackberry, Mobile Phone, MP3 Player?

I tell you what, I'd cash in on all you suckers buying that stuff and make one mother of a battery type.

Ceramic supercapcitor this or that, yeah I'd own you all.

[CompWiz]

Well, I'm more of a laptop person than a mobile phone person, so, I'll start this off with that.

Screen: 3d LCD. Naturally it would be one of the Sharp ones that can go into normal mode so everyone can see it, and 3d mode for one person sitting directly in front of it, so it can do 3d without 3d glasses. Oh, and also it should be like 20 inches or so, widescreen for nice movie watching, low latency, good color reproduction, and a nice high resolution, like 1920x1200. Also, it would incorporate the mirror coating on the components in the screen so sunlight would cause the screen to get brighter, instead of making it harder to see(I forget what it's called, but I saw an article on the Inquirer about it recently). Also, it should be a touchscreen, so taking notes would be a breeze, as it would also be able to rotate and fold onto the laptop backwards like a tablet(albeit very large tablet) PC.

Dual AMD quad core CPU's with one of those upcoming 4x4 setups, to give an effective 8 cores with full bandwidth, thanks to the direct connect architecture.

Nice low latency RAM, like 2 CAS latency 1ghz modules. Might as well go for a nice pair of 2GB modules to give a nice 4 gig dual channel setup.

Naturally, 2 nVidia X2 7950's SLI'ed together to give a quad gpu setup with a total of 2 gigs of video ram. Or, wait for ATI's new R600's, and put 2 together in crossfire.

With such a big screen, there's no reason not to go with a plus size keyboard, and as we are splurging for the latest technology, lets go for the optimus keyboard, on which every key is an lcd display that shows what it's currently doing, whether it's typing(in any language) photoshop, or computer games.

Put in a good sized touchpad, pointer stick, and also, have one of those mice that can fold up and fit into a laptop expansion slot. When in the slot, it recharges, when out, it's a wireless mouse. Say about 2500DPI laser sensor(real-time adjustable, like with the A4 tech x7), and a good assortment of extra buttons, along with a scroll wheel that can spin freely or click along precicely, depending on how you spin it(ala logitech's new mouse). Also, it should support sideways scrolling.

For the drive, have a multi-burner that can support Blu-ray, HD-DVD, DVD+/-RW/RAM, and CD-RW, all at the highest possible buring speeds. If Blu-ray and HD-DVD aren't both possible with the same drive, I think I'd just settle for Blu-ray, or just include 2 drives, one for each format, and each with backwards compatability.

Put in Creative's newest card, xi-fi would be nice. Also pair it with decent onboard speakers, including a subwoofer. However, since onboard speakers aren't all that good, include a good pair of surround sound headphones, all nice cushy and leathery, with a mic, of course, for VOIP or teamchat or w/e.

Hmm, for hard drives, I think I'd go for a raid 0 array of the new 150 gb raptors, along with seagate's new 750 gb 7200.10 SATA II barricuda with perpendicular recording, NCQ, and 16mb cache for storage. Or, you could wait for one of those solid state flash hard drives to come out, and use it to run the OS off of at increadible speeds.

Networking is always important for laptops, so it would be a good idea to have a powerful wireless N card with a good antenna. Also, 2 gigabit ethernet ports for wired networking.

For a nice extra, put a good webcam just above the screen so you can do video chat with people.

Now, outputs:

2x DVI, HDTV, VGA, S-video, component, HDMI, 5x USB 2.0, 2x eSATA, 2x firewire, all the sound inputs and outputs from the creative card, Serial port, the gigabit ethernet ports, a multi-type card reader, and of course the power cable.

Since this would undoubtably generate an incredible amount of heat, the whole thing should be liquid cooled, or maybe even some sort of compact exotic cooling. Also, it would definatly have the heat blowing away from you, out the back of the computer, not on you.

Also, since it needs a huge amount of power, I think I'd probably have to go with Jim e's Ceramic supercapcitor for power.

So, let me know if I missed anything.

I was thinking about just scrapping the screen and instead going for a virtural reality headset. What do you think?

[tr1p1ea]

You are referring to Auto-Stereoscopic 3D? There are displays soon to hit the market which can do that and have a wide viewing angle.

[CompWiz]

hmm, I thought I remembered reading an article about that. I wasn't sure, and I didn't see them on a quick search I did. I had originally listed Sharp's 3d lcd's with a limited viewing angle when in 3d mode, but yeah, I'd go for the one you mentioned.

[DigiTan]

One mobile phone idea I'm thinking of submitting is a satellite radio phone. Basically, you have your typical CDMA or GSM phone -- not much different from the ones most people already carry; but you have options to suscribe for satellite radio. The subscription would provide for XM radio or Sirius audio privliges, and your network provider would steam the content to the consumer.

So far this stuff isn't on the market yet, though it's already a work-in progress for a few networks. Now that the video phone market is already here, the signal distribution infrastructure can already handle the bandwidth need and then some. One of the problems video phones had was the fact that people hate pre-recorded content (especially on a 2" display). But an XM/Sirius phone would be 100% real-time and require less bandwidth on the user's end. Plus, that's not just music; it's news, weather, sports...basically anything you could ask for.

Besides that, a bluetooth adapter would be a plus for the professional market. My Samsung also has one of those cool web browsers so I check my mail or see doppler weather radar when I'm on the road. MP3/MIDI support would be an obvious need. Then of course, you'd have the hands-free port for music. Also, a phone that doubled as a flash drive would be dynamite. Especially with any web capabilities. Finally, to really reel in those jet-setting professional types, you'd have the phone GPS-enabled. But most of all, the satellite radio looks to be the next big thing.

[KermMartian]

How about a phone that had a built in USB flash drive capability - but you could access its storage remotely, as long as it was on and you had some sort of access code?

(c)2006 Kerm Martian, 'cause that's not a bad idea O.o

[anykey]

I would put all those things into one super device!
Now presenting the PortableComputerMobilePhonePDAMp3Player!

[Patori]

I would put all those things into one super device!
Now presenting the PortableComputerMobilePhonePDAMp3Player!

So basically a tablet pc with skype?

[benryves]

I would put all those things into one super device!
Now presenting the PortableComputerMobilePhonePDAMp3Player!

They exist, but they call them just "mobile phones" now. They even take photos too.

[Arcane WIzard]

link (not even that new any more, I have mine for well over a year now). Could even run a Java app to allow remote interaction with the internal memory or memory stick (which are available in up to 4GB I believe).

[dysfunction]

I would say a do-it-all pocket PC. Cellphone, wifi, running an embedded Linux (probably a Debian-based distro) with full expandibility. Two internal 16 gig flash drives, plus an expansion slot. Smallish touchscreen (maybe two inches, with QVGA res), but with an HD projector (a version of this is already in the works for cellphones), and one of those optical keyboards. Built-in digital camera and microphone.

[DigiTan]

Alright, I just got my submission in yesterday. Basically it was part of one of those marketing studies and I got a ~fairly detailed pencil sketch in. The idea I went with was a satellite radio phone with flash drive support. It also featured a CCD camera and an interface for MP3. Bonus for best design is $100.

[CoBB]

A cellphone with only three functions: phone (with a comfortable phonebook that doesn't require me to wade through a thousand menus to manipulate and simple muting/unmuting), SMS (with comfortable navigation again, and T9 of course), clock.

By the way, what's the difference between a laptop and a notebook? I thought those are synonyms.

[DigiTan]

It should be edited it to be "Tablet." While I was searching for feature ideas I ran across a lot of wierd designs. The most interestings: orgami phone, Win XP Phone, and a wrist model that's a flexible armband.