Blackberry Empathy: The Phone that can read your Mood

There are certain unique features in the much anticipated concept phone of Blackberry. The Blackberry Empathy.

The Empathy concept phone is a brainchild of a project RIM sponsored at the Art Center College of Design. The design of the phone is pretty slick if RIM could pull something like that off but I would never want to drop it… On the other hand the concept behind the phone is really odd. The idea is that it is supposed to “detect emotional data” through some magic ring and show both your emotions and your contacts and social graph.

Here is how the designers Kiki Tang and Daniel Yoon describe the interface:

It is of course touch based and all the user’s connections are shown graphically so you can see who is connected to whom. Each contact has an avatar that is encompassed by two colored rings. The inner colored ring shows the contact’s previous emotional state, and the outer ring represents the contact’s current emotional state. It is important to show the shift in emotions in order to see how an event has affected that contact.

Another important feature that we felt was important was the “Emotional Health Chart”. This chart would monitor the user’s emotional health through an indefinite period of time. One would be able to see how a certain event, or phone call/ message has affected the user. Obviously, if the chart shows someone is always upset, there would be a problem… If permitted, a user would be able to view other user’s charts as well.

According to Engadget, the EMPATHY “communicates your frustration at the phone's  The Empathy is an angular phone that looks absolutely stunning -- and a tad bonkers. Its front is home to an OLED touchscreen that's transparent when not in use, and opaque at other times. It wouldn't be a proper BlackBerry without a physical keyboard, but the Empathy's is located on its back.

Touching the screen anywhere reveals a tabbed control wheel that lets you access your most commonly used features, like email, SMS, contacts, music and the camera. You pull a tab to access the desired feature.

In a nutty sci-fi twist, the phone connects to a biometrics ring which is worn by the user. This ring collects emotional data, by examining the wearer's heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and skin secretions.

According to CNET, This emotional data is made visible to your contacts, so they'll know whether they should leave you alone until you're feeling less fragile, or whether they can go right ahead and pop that balloon next to your ear. You can also see the emotional state of your contacts who are wearing a ring.

We don't think we'll be seeing the Empathy anytime soon, however. Mood rings seem like they're a long way from becoming reality, and you'd also need to know enough people who wear these rings to make this key feature of the Empathy worthwhile. As for the design, it looks smashing but it's not exactly pocket-friendly.