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Modu is ready to show the world their ideas on how cell phones should be.  Their concept is the “guts” of the phone (that is it in the center of the photo) should be allowed to move into new housings, preserving the basic phone functionality but allowing new features specific to that housing.  Follow?

The base Modu phone is a small thin chip-like unit.  This unit, dubbed “lightest cell phone” by the Guiness World Records, slides into all the jackets or could be used by itself.  From their site:

By sliding modu into a wide range of phone enclosures & consumer electronic devices modu enables consumers to create an entirely new personal communication experience and meet their ever changing needs, preferences and style.

One really interesting part of all this is these jackets and mates change the interface.  While the base Modu phone has an unbelievably small screen, the jackets screens are larger, feature application specific buttons and mission-specific interface.  So your phone is always changing.

Here is a smattering of options:

• Street art jacket - makes your phone stylish to the extreme and a graphical user interface
• Express jacket - slim and colorful.
• Bicycle jacket - nothing goes better with riding your bike than music.  A waterproof enclosure insures your phone isn’t falling into that puddle with you. (concept)
• Night jacket - sleek styling that reminds me of the HTC Diamond.
• Car jacket - equipped with a suction cup, this funky arm keeps your phone near you.
• Ring - modu phone holder that allows you to twirl the phone around your finger - fun!
• Sport jacket - arm cuff incorporating music controls while you pump out the jam
• Classic jacket - looks to be a standard issue slider phone.
• Photo frame- makes calls through a photo frame and share images
.

Presumably, these jackets would be inexpensive to convince you to collect them all.  But somehow, I don’t expect that will happen.

The idea is clever, take the basic function of a cell phone and plug it into to where you are: car stereo, home stereo, TV, GPS, you get the idea.  Unfortunately, the company strayed a bit from that concept while the rest of us make do with adapting our phones to do most of this.  We’ll see how this develops at the Mobile World Congress later this month as it is definitely one to watch.

What do you think, is this concept attractive to you?  Would you shell out for accessories all over again?

Company site [Modu] via [TechCrunch]