LG survey shows netbooks, "blooming" keyboards, and ultra-dumb phones

@grg / 11:38 am PDT • August 11, 2009

Surveys are fun. Some ask you your favorite color, purely for the sake of science. Others help you determine which Twilight character you are. Our favorites are the ones that reveal all of the awesome concepts handset manufacturers are cracking away at behind closed doors.

Take this latest one from LG, as spotted by an EngadgetMobile reader, for example. In but a few pages of text, three crazy concepts are unveiled:

Netbook integration: Like Nokia, LG apparently wants to get into the Netbook biz. The twist here, however, is integration: Somehow, this “Synergy” netbook (No, not that Synergy) would tie into your smartphone (whether it would work on many LG phones or just one specific model is unspecified) and allow you to answer calls and texts without whipping out your phone. We’re not quite sure why this requires dedicated hardware – why not just make it a software solution and make future LG phones compatible with it?

“Blooming” keyboards: This one’s the craziest of the bunch. Imagine a folding QWERTY keyboard, like the enV 2 – except that the keyboard, rather than staying flat, “blooms” out to a curved surface when you open the phone. This expands the space between keys without making the handset huge. It sounds awesome, but it’s difficult to imagine how usable a crazy curved keyboard would actually be.

Elva Text Messaging Phone: Take any QWERTY phone. Strip it down to just the keyboard and a crap two-line display. Call it the Elva and sell it for $50 bucks. With smartphones becoming cheaper and cheaper and entry level handsets becoming more and more capable, we’re already starting to view feature phones as a waste of plastic. Further dumbification seems like a terrible idea to us.