Sometimes you want more volume than your iPhone can offer from its somewhat weedy internal speaker, but you don’t want to have to carry around bulky external units either – so how about a folding speaker?
That’s the principle behind the Flexible Speaker concept from designer Chun-Chieh Yang: a flexible, fold-able speaker system which can be carried easily and increase the volume of your portable devices without needing you to carry additional bulk.
Showcased over on the Yanko Design blog, Yang describes the concept device as operating like a chorus: “Imagine that each connecting piece of the speaker is an individual mouth. Opening one piece is just like opening a mouth. If fully open the speaker will be like a choir singing a song.”
As a result, there’s no volume control to be found on the device. Instead, the volume is adjusted by increasing or decreasing the number of speaker surfaces that are visible: fold the device smaller and the volume will reduce; unfold it fully and you’ll enjoy a surprisingly loud volume for such a small package.
To keep the size down, the Flexible Speaker doesn’t use traditional cones and magnets: instead, it’s based around FFL – Flat, Flexible Laminate – speaker technology, which has already proven itself in the marketplace with a number of manufacturers producing razor-thin speaker systems based around FFL technology. While this design might be the most dramatic use of FFL speaker systems, it’s certainly not beyond what the technology is capable of.
While the concept images provided by the designer are certainly eye-catching, there’s one rather important shot missing: the unit actually being folded. With all the images showing the speaker system fully deployed and ready for use, it’s hard to judge just how compact and portable the system is – and possibly indicates that Yang is having one or two problems creating a fully-working prototype.
Something else which is missing from the design is power: there doesn’t appear to be much room for an internal battery, and all the speaker panels in the world won’t give you impressive volume if you’re attempting to run them passively from a headphone jack.
Reservations aside, it’s a neat idea for an easily portable speaker than can be adjusted to meet the needs of most audio-sharing situations – and while the device remains nothing more than a concept design for now, Yang would certainly be interested in hearing from any manufacturers who would like to take the idea to market.
