Bone Phone

Bone-Conduction technology is not a new thing. Bone-Conduction means a sound wave is conducted through your skull by vibration and further to inner ear so you can hear the audio. In fact, back in the early 1980's a company called JS&A sold a product that allowed you to do just this with transistor radio. That way, you could jazzercise or hula-hoop with this scarf like object draped around your shoulders so you could rock out to ABBA or Gordon Lightfoot or whatever. Pocketcalculatorshow.com profiles this original product here.

 

Recently, however, South Korea based handset vendor, Pantech has launched a Bone-Conduction mobile phone in Japan on the KDDI network. The phone, the Pantech-au A1407PT  has a bone-conduction speaker attached on the front of handset - which you would press to your head to "hear" the conversation.

 

The company says that the A1407PT is useful for people who are frequently in noisy places such as construction site, interchange with heavy traffic and subway stations. The Pantech-au A1407PT has also attracted public attention from before launching with being granted a 'Friendly Design' label by KDDI.

 

In addition, the device comes with some other unique features including a strong alarm that is sounded when pressing and holding the "#" button for self defense as an "anti-crime" alarm. Various other multimedia functions such as built-in 1.35 mega pixel camera, games and IrDA communication round out the phone.