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Your vote will make ZTE's crowdsourced device ideas a reality

Some of these suggestions are just bizarre.

ZTE isn't wowing anyone with its new Axon 7 Mini phone, but it does have a far more intriguing device up its sleeve. The Chinese company shared some updates on its Project CSX campaign, which is an effort to crowdsource ideas for a groundbreaking mobile device. Starting today, you can start voting for one of the top 20 ideas in the company's forum.

Since the campaign opened up for submissions at the beginning of the month, it has received about 300 ideas from all over the world.

The device isn't confined to just phones. It can be anything mobile, as long as it's affordable and uses technology that's realistic within a year. Some of the more intriguing proposals that ZTE's vice president of product planning and technology Jeff Yee shared include a Bluetooth glove that can move your fingers to teach you how to do things, such as play the piano or guitar. Some others are less novel, but make a lot of sense, such as a smartphone with an embedded solar panel to draw power from the sun.

ZTE will pick three of these ideas on September 11th for phase two of the campaign, which lets the public submit technical drawings for the selected proposals starting September 12th. Come October, the company will pick the final designs for users to vote on, and the people behind the entry with the most votes will win a trip to CES 2017 in Las Vegas.

It'll be interesting to see what Project CSX results in, and if the eventual product will help ZTE create something truly compelling. The company has committed to bringing the device to fruition by 2017. In the meantime, you can submit your ideas or keep up with the wild suggestions over at ZTE's forums.

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