KEY POINTS:
Looking for a phone that reflects your style and personal tastes? Modu and Vringo believe they have small solutions with major potential.
Phone morphing and user generated video ringtones may sound like sci fi notions, but they're among the most talked about technologies at the 2008 Mobile World Congress.
Small is big at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. From the world's smallest phone to the world's smallest film festival, innovative upstarts like Modu and Vringo are introducing new ideas that may be miniature in form but massive in their ambition. As Modu Marketing vice-president Zach Weisfeld explains, modu is essentially a new kind of mobile device that can be slotted into any number of mobile shells, or jackets.
Zack Weisfeld, Vice President Marketing, modu says "We decoupled the phone into two pieces right. Into a technology piece and into a design and function piece. You have almost everything you need in this tiny guy (modu phone) which is the smallest phone and lightest phone in the world. It does everything that the phone does. You can call from it. You can do everything from it. What you do is you put your modu inside, you slip it inside what's called a modu jacket and the modu jacket gets a completely new life. A completely new user experience for your phone."
Vringo CEO Jonathan Medved has a vision of the future that would see video ringtones calling out to customers who want a bit more stimulation in their mobile experience.
"Today we all have these wonderful phones and these phones have tremendous video capability. What we're doing is unlocking the video capability in the phone so you you can get a video ringtone. Rather than just a phone ringing with sound, why not open up your phone with light and colour and action and animation, your favourite music video, a TV clip or something."
