Modu... four letters, one word that everybody should note because this phone can easily change our mind about mobile phones.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the visitors were facing a funny advertisement in front of the 8th building (the largest one) : the meaning of the word "Modu" was interpreted with something like an explanatory note. We visited the company because we were very interested in the concept.

Hirdetés

How to begin... there is a black phone sized like a matchbox with a tiny display and six buttons. This is Modu. The phone itself is not a big thing, 1GB memory, colour display, it can be used for making calls, writing SMS or gaming, the battery can support 3 hours of talk. This is the point when things go exciting: there are jackets. These are phones with own electric circuit, display and battery, and the modu can be inserted into them - because they can't be used without it, at least not for phoning.

The modu is that small

And what is all this good for? The company's leaders told us the following: there are very good all-in-one phones on the market, but it is specific for them that not all of their features are 100% complete. One of them might have a good camera, but it's not the best choice for music playback, etc. Modu helps this with the jackets: we can listen to music with one of them, the other is capable of navigation, the third is an megapixel camera with optical zoom, the fourth is a model with QWERTY keyboard, web browser and email client and the series could be continued, the possibilities are endless. The future owners of the modu won't be needing to take everywhere a huge phone weighing half a tons, it's enough to have the modu with them and the jackets can be changed when needed.

Let's imagine the following, a situation which might seem a bit idyllic. We wake up in the morning, our modu is inserted in the alarm clock, fully charged. We pull it out and take it to the kitchen, insert in its docking bay over there, which downloads are emails on it, while we listen to the radio. When sitting in the car we put the small machinery in the radio, which of course serves as a loudspeaker too and also navigates. At our workplace we insert the the modu in a HTC-like device with a QWERTY keyboard and work with it. After work we go jogging, with the modu in a shock-resistant jacket which also plays music. In the evening we take it with us in an elegant, 3 megapixel jacket to the copmany party.

So this is the essence of the modu: not to take everything with us, only what we need, but that should be perfect. The modu itself is just a phone storing our data and files, all other features are given by the jackets. After the presentation we have of course asked the question: that's nice, but how much does it cost? We stared open-mouthed upon hearing the answer: the basic modu and two jackets will cost 200 € (with subscription), the price of a normal jacket will be about 40-60 € (this category includes for example the model with a QWERTY keyboard and the music player) and the most expensive one will cost 100 €, they won't be going any higher than that (this will be the price of a jacket with an outstanding camera).

At the presentation we first thought about the jackets that they are non-working demo pieces, so we were quite surprised when the lady put the modu in one of them, which functioned. Unfortunately there were dummy models too, like the 8 megapixel camera with optical zoom, the bicycle GPS, the desk photo frame/speaker and the car radio. We however watched a few models in function: a musical one; a case with a QWERTY keyboard and large display; a mid-category camera (3 megapixel, autofocus); one designed for jogging, equipped with a gyroscope and a desktop speaker which had a surprisingly good sound quality.