IfDesignAwards
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HMK 561 electric bike concept seats you on the battery, makes you significantly more attractive
Most electric bikes are fairly sordid affairs, little more than an ordinary bicycle with a motorized hub, a strap-on battery pack and regenerative braking capabilities (if you're lucky). Not this HMK 561 electric bicycle concept, which took home an iF Design Award for some seriously forward thinking. It's not just the stylish forward rake of this juiced cruiser that's innovative, it's the frame -- composed completely of a conductive carbon fiber weave that allows the bike's body to not just pass electricity to the motors, but actually store it like a giant capacitor. Factor in integrated lights and a pinch of that aforesaid regenerative braking at each axle, and you've just about got the bicycle of our dreams. Oh, and did we mention a prototype has already been built? Yeah. %Gallery-88012%
Qisda's ultra high-res QCM-330 smartphone and more surface ahead of iF awards
The iF Design Awards won't officially be handed out until the big ceremony at CeBIT next month, but some of the winners have now already been announced, and they include a few surprises. One of those is this new Qisda QCM-330 smartphone, which is said to be Android-based, and packs a 4-inch, 1,280 x 1,024 screen (supposedly, although the actual resolution will likely differ given the aspect ratio), WiFi and HSDPA connectivity, a 3 megapixel camera, and an accelerometer, among other, as yet unnamed specs. It's joined by the LG GD880 we previously spotted in the wild, along with a slew of phones headed for Vodafone, including the Compass slider, and the Krystal (pictured after the break), which apparently packs displays on both sides and some augmented reality-type features (like on the fly translation of newspapers). Rounding out the lot are the decidedly more ordinary Vodafone Sting, Shilpa, Quincy and, our personal favorite, the Larry. Hit up the link below for a closer look at those.
