No meat to Sanyo's bone conducting phone
All the leaks about the NGage 2 indicate Nokia has put an end to sidetalkin', but if you're disappointed that there won't be any cellphone users out there looking like idiots to make fun of, rest easy. You can continue beating the dead horse for a while, since Nokia still has one more sidetalkin' phone, the 7700, on the way.
But supplying a whole new target on which to sharpen your wit, MobileBurn checks out another way to look foolish while you talk on the phone. A few months back, Sanyo introduced a handset in Japan that claimed to use bone conduction in place of a regular speaker so users could hold the phone up to their cheek or jaw and make the phone calls in virtual silence without even having to open the phone. It turns out that Sanyo's bone conduction is just a glorified speakerphone. There's no actual bone conduction going on — the pad broadcasts the sound loud enough for everyone around to hear, including the user, obviously. (And you thought Nextel users doing that push-to-talk thing were annoying.) Anyway, as entertaining as this sounds, it's unlikely you'll see anyone using the cheekpad speakerphone here since it's only available on one phone, the TS41, that you can only use in Japan.
