If the idea of a mirror on the iPhone lock screen was as brilliant as we thought it to be, this concept phone is idealized with a small display on the back, alongside its charismatic triple camera array, and we are bewildered: which one is a better feature. Of course, there is no contest, and designer Braz de Pina is far from contesting either. His new conceptual design of this iPhone Brutal is little about this small screen or the tri-lens camera array; it’s more about the form factor he has tried to achieve.
From when I first saw and all the way down to the last picture on the designer’s Behance portfolio, this brutal take basically came forward to me as a smartphone that someone created by cross-breeding a vibrant boxy floppy disk with a dual-screen flip phone. The designer doesn’t shy from affirming that his idea was never to make that concept sleek; it’s meant to be a study in “reduction, structure, and unapologetic geometry,” and it wears that mission loudly in its robust but bulky form factor.
Designer: Braz de Pina
The concept may be far from a full-fledged product, but it has certain clarity in its design. Japanese industrial cues are evident in its blocky yet functional approach. Besides the form, the color patterns give a clear definition to the modular layers of the phone, its airflow channels and even the camera housing at the back. Everything here is designed to be flaunted and thus this phone is anything close to the modern approach in phone making, thus substantiating its ‘Brutal’ identity.
For its functionality, as evident through the pictures, the iPhone Brutal is created to open like a flip, dual-screen phone. On the back of the rigid and abstract exterior lies a triple lens array, which is packed in a housing alongside a small screen, typically displaying the weather update in pictures. The lenses are Carl Zeiss–inspired for precision and immaculate quality.
Besides the design, if there is anything that will catch the eye, especially that of a photographer, it is this optical panel, which speaks a different design language to Apple’s approach, but is in the acceptable realm. Brutal’s exposed camera modules may therefore not be a roadmap for Apple’s next iPhone, but they have details to check out.
De Pina notes, the iPhone Brutal is “far from a final product.” It shares DNA with different designs he is exploring for a potential MacBook concept and challenges the natural status quo, where phones are mostly designed to look slimmer and smaller. This one brings out an honest, brutal look one we would mind being visualized for the MacBook either. Who’s interested?
