As electronic manufacturers including Apple and Samsung race to produce the next great consumer electronics product with each season, its no surprise that over 152 million mobile devices – including smartphones and tablets – are disposed of each year (that’s over 416,000 per day) worldwide.
So, while Moore’s Law has previously encouraged us to adopt smaller and lighter devices, we’re at a point now where even devices that are a few years old are still ‘high-tech’ and capable – relatively speaking … which ultimately brings us to the question of “why throw out our devices at all?”
This is the question that Ukraine-based industrial designer Ivan Zhurba encourages us to ask ourselves with his latest lamp design that encourages users to forego throwing away their iPhones in favor of converting them into a plugged-in light source and speaker via embedded cable and acoustic channels.
“It’s an elegant, simple arm that holds your iPhone,” says Zhurba. “While in its nook, the phone can be used as a lamp by turning on the flashlight feature, and since the bottom of the iPhone remains exposed, it can remain plugged into a charging cable and can even pump out some Spotify or iTunes music over Wi-Fi.”
Currently, the 3D printed lamp design is capable of housing the iPhone 4/4S or an iPhone 5/5C while the iPhone 6 version is in the works. He is planning on releasing the design through the Kwambio 3D printing sales platform as early as July of 2015.
Needless to say, this is one of the more ingenious solutions for making use of our older devices that we’ve seen yet. Be sure to check out the rest of Zhurba’s impressive portfolio over on Behance.
