Alternate Neo1973 case designs
From Openmoko
This page is a repository for alternate case designs for the Neo1973, intended to be designed, built and fitted by the community/the phone's owner.
Each alternate case design suggestion needs some or all of: a description, intended uses, a 3D model in an open format (e.g. .stl), rendered images of the intended design, materials and any information regarding buttons etc. which connect electronically to components within the phone.
Manufacture
There are numerous rapid prototyping companies that will very cheaply make small run components from various polymers, including:
Design Suggestions
Some of these are a copy of requests in Wish List - Hardware#Casing, some are from ideas thrown up in the community mailing list.
- Steampunk: a Steampunk influenced design. See also Steampunk Workshop.
- Digital gaming: a case with a digital D-pad, four face-mounted buttons and four shoulder-mounted buttons.
- Analogue gaming: a case with an analogue thumbstick, four face-mounted buttons and four shoulder-mounted buttons.
- Side-mounted touch strip sensor: a touch strip attached to the side, as discussed here
- Trackstick: a miniature pointing device, as used on certain IBM laptops
- Ruggedized: a hermetically sealed case, watertight, and able to withstand a pre-defined drop on to a hard surface.
- Space efficient lanyard: the lanyard loop at the bottom of the standard case is very large - it could be replaced by a smaller one, reducing the overall phone size.
- Alternate colours/materials: use the existing case shape, but change the colour and material for a unique design.
- Aluminium
- Wood
- Stainless steel
- Rubber-feel polymer
- Different speaker orientation: identical externally to the standard case, but with the speakers mounted one at each end of the phone (on the top), as discussed on the community mailing list. The intention is to give a better stereo spread when listening to stereo-encoded music.
- Alternate screen: the current screen is a 2.8", 640 x 480 colour screen, which some may consider unnecessary and overly power-hungry. This case would allow a smaller, possibly monochrome screen to be fitted, saving battery time. Some may also wish to fit a larger screen - another case variant could allow for that.
- Extra storage: at present, the Neo1973 has 2GB of available storage through a microSD card. This could conceivably be expanded with a larger case that allowed a second microSD card, or some other format such as a CF or SD card, to be fitted.
- Extra battery: a slightly larger case may allow for a second battery to be fitted.
- Tamper-proof: this case would require special tools/processes to open it, or be completely impossible to open without breaking the phone. May also be useful for a cheap hermetically sealed variant.
- Gaming docking station: for connection of other external hardware, such as PS/Xbox/Wii/etc. controller. The phone would have a mount on the back to allow stable, rigid attachment to a game controller.
- Hardware keyboard docking station: to allow mechanical connection to an external hardware keyboard, such as the Freedom Mini Bluetooth Keyboard Freedom mini bluetooth keyboard. The phone would have a mount on the back to allow stable, rigid attachment to the keyboard, for a similar setup to the game controller above.
- Square case: a number of users have requested a case with no rounded corners on the top and bottom, for aesthetic reasons.
- Removal of free space: it has been noted that there is an amount of unnecessary free space within the case - this variant would remove that, possibly with some rearrangement of components, to make the phone slightly smaller.
Some users may want combinations of the options listed above.
None of this can be accomplished without the dimensions of existing phones - if FIC are unable/unwilling to release precise dimensions, a user of a Neo1973 will need to measure their phone and upload the information to Neo1973 case schematics in the form of a CAD drawing/model.
