What if you could plug your smartphone into a dock, and along with a monitor, you used it as a PC? The Symetium smartphone was developed precisely with that idea in mind.
Symetium rised from Sweden, so it’s no wonder that it has Scandinavian design written all over it. Besides the minimalistic design that seems to characterize everything made in Sweden, Norway or Denmark, Symetium focuses on symmetry and quality, things that you don’t get to see in many smartphones with flagship claims.
According to Jonathan Gustafsson, the young Swedish entrepreneur behind Symetium, this smartphone may look like others, but it’s nothing like them. In fact, the goal was “to create a device that removes the line between mobile and desktop devices.”
Sure, smartphones can already be compared to desktop PCs, performance-wise, but many a times users need a larger display, and phablets or tablets simply won’t do. By plugging it into a dock that connects to displays via a USB Type-C to HDMI adapter, Symetium becomes the brains of your desktop PC. Even though it’s supposed to be running Android 6.0 Marshmallow, the user interface is adequate for both mobile and desktop use. In the absence of a mouse and keyboard, the touchscreen display can be used for such purposes.
“With Symetium, I want to go past mobile operating systems and join the two together. It is time for phones to stop being phones as they are much more than that and have been for years,” explained Gustaffson.
Specs-wise, Symetium is nothing short of impressive. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC that is paired with 6GB of RAM and up to 256GB in storage. Some might argue that the 1080p OLED display could’ve had a higher resolution, but since this is a 5-inch smartphone with a 440ppi pixel density, more than that wouldn’t have made any sense. For audio files (and audiophiles), the phone packs stereo speakers. Photography fans weren’t let down, either, as the device includes a 24MP rear camera.
“In my eyes Symetium will always be a 5 inch portable computer that can make calls and that’s how it was built. This means that there will be no limitation when it’s used without a simcard,” concluded Gustafsson.
In the last three years, since Gustaffson begam working on Symetium, the project has made quite a few waves on social networks, but it remains to be seen if it will ever be commercially available.
Jonathan Gustafsson turned to Indiegogo to get his project funded. To enter mass production, he needs to hit the funding goal of $1,250,000 within the next 29 days. That is quite a lot, but then again, the Symetium smartphone PC is a very ambitious project. Assuming that the campaign will be successful, anyone who has pledged $549 as an early bird or $699 as a regular backer can expect to receive their Symetium in August 2016. I sincerely doubt it that any other company will be able to exceed Symetium’s specs by then, but on the other hand, with such a high funding goal, this looks like Ubuntu Edge all over again.
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