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Rest easy, folks: we know it's pointy at the bottom, but we've been
assured this isn't the BlackBerry 7100's true successor. Instead, the
so-called Empathy is the bizarre outcome of of a RIM-sponsored design
project at the Art Center College of Design that touts its ability to
detect the emotions of its user and his or her contacts. It's not
exactly clear how it'd do that, but one crucial element is the
biometric feedback ring that communicates your frustration at the
phone's inability to properly sync IMAP accounts in real time. All of
this anger and joy is displayed on a social map -- colored rings
indicate your contacts' previous and current emotional states -- which
is presented on a full touchscreen that can become transparent when
the phone's not in use. Prefer the Bold to the Storm, do you? Turn the
phone around, and boom, you've got one of the scariest looking
portrait QWERTY keyboards the world has ever seen. We don't really
anticipate seeing this chiseled slab of bleeding-heart technology in
RIM's lineup any time soon... but we can definitely see the benefit to
knowing when your BBM contacts are ready to put a fist through a wall.
Follow the break for video.
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