A young designer has came up with a phone concept that smashes together design elements from Nintendo's Wiimote, Tonium's Pacemaker Portable DJ, and the iPhone to make an interesting portable music system.
Jose Tomas DeLuna came up with his KRE8 project during a school design session sponsored by Motorola, and the result shows the difficulty of scaling down a full-bodied DJ or music system to a small portable. Previous attempts have involved complicated dial systems (Pacemaker), or PMP versions with crippled tuning apps.
DeLuna decided that the best way to increase functionality was by 
splitting the phone into two parts. Each part has a sensor and an accelerometer, so when a user makes a specific gesture, the phone determines which of three different operating modes it uses: Instrument Mode (for guitar, drums, violin playing), Mix Mode (for DJ-ing) and Record Mode.
For Mix Mode, the touch-enabled software allows the user to slide in instruments, clips, and effects in the middle of a song. Through the simple control system on the right-hand menu, you're supposed to edit levels on the four main corners of the screen, including gain and bass. While this option doesn't give you the ability to use a real dial like the Pacemaker, one can see that a large visual is much more helpful in determining mixes on the go.
In fact, I can already see somebody coming up with an improved version of this as a software upgrade for any other touch phone, including the iPhone.
But the differentiating factor is the use of accelerometers to build beats on the go. You hold on piece in each hand, and like the Wiimote and control, you can sound out beats like you would in Wii's Music game. Hold up the pieces along an outstretched arm, and you should be able to 'play' the violin.
DeLuna says that in his ideal version of the phone, the output of the beats are recorded as a MIDI Signal and could be shared to other phones through 3G. This is different from the social networking aspect of the Pacemaker, which places its social networking and music sharing options on the web only.
As some people noted on Yanko, the concept does have serious flaws when it comes to potentially being produced. For example, using one main screen that's separated into two would cause serious manufacturing and design difficulties by doubling the overall price and the drivers needed.
But we like the design and a version of this could definitely be fun to play with.
Check out more pics of the design after the jump.
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