Bone Phone: Hear Calls Inside Your Skull! (Bone Conduction Audio)

[Mighty_Emperor]

Block your ears to hear better on Japan's new bone phone

Tokyo
January 21, 2004



Japanese telecom carriers, pioneers of internet-capable and picture-snapping handsets, have now come up with the world's first mobile phone that enables users to listen to calls inside their heads - by conducting sound through bone.

The TS41 handset, manufactured by electronics firm Sanyo, was put on sale by the Tu-Ka mobile phone group this month, drawing healthy demand from customers who want to hear calls better in busy streets and other noisy places.

The new phone is equipped with a "Sonic Speaker" which transmits sounds through vibrations that move from the skull to the cochlea in the inner ear, instead of relying on the usual method of sound hitting the outer eardrum.

With the new handset, the key to better hearing in a noisy situation is to plug your ears to prevent outside noise from drowning out bone-conducted sounds.

If the user holds the handset to the top of the head, the back of the head, cheekbone or jaw and plugs his or her left ear, the call will be heard internally on the left side.

It is the first time that the bone conduction has been used in mobile phones although the technology has been available for fixed-line phones in Japan, mostly for elderly people, for the past two years.

The Tu-Ka group has launched a major advertising campaign for the new mobile phone, featuring a young woman and a X-ray image of her skull using the handset.

A spokesman at Tu-Ka Cellular Tokyo said it was too early to declare the TS41 a success, but retail store clerks said they were seeing a healthy demand for it.

"We have lots of inquires from young women thanks to the television commercial," said Tomoyuki Harasawa, a sales consultant at a Bic Camera consumer electronics store in Yurakucho, central Tokyo.

"The actual buyers are mostly businessmen in their 30s and 40s," Harasawa said.

"We sell four to five TS41s a day, a good figure for Tu-Ka, which lags far behind rival mobile operators" such as DoCoMo and Vodafone.

The mobile phone is priced at ¥7800 ($A95) each at the discount store.

"I don't know if this is going to be a big hit, but it will be possible for Tu-Ka to raise its market share since this high-profile handset has improved its brand recognition among consumers," Harasawa said.

Tu-Ka firms belong to Japan's second-largest telecom carrier, KDDI group.

But Tu-Ka subscribers account for only a small percentage of the market, far less than the roughly 20 per cent for the "au" brand in the same KDDI group and the more than 50 per cent for industry leader DoCoMo.

Customers who examined the new phone on the Bic Camera sales floor had mixed reactions.

Masaya Iwata, a 31-year-old accountant, said the product was interesting but he was not sure if he would buy it because he uses his mobile less and less for talking.

"I use my mobile for picture-taking and emailing rather than having conversations," he said.

Japan's top mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo launched "i-mode" phones in February 1999, offering internet surfing, emailing and video watching on mobile handsets.

And J-Phone, now rebranded Vodafone to underline that it is controlled by the British-based telecoms giant, launched picture-taking handsets in November 2000.

Nearly every new mobile handset in Japan now has a built-in digital camera enabling users to send images taken with their mobiles via email to other handsets or computers.

Tomohiro Abukawa, a 34-year-old hair stylist, said he liked the bone-conducting phone, noting railway stations and streets were often too noisy to talk.

"I may get this as it is also small," he said.

But one woman in her 20s said she found the phone "scary". "Isn't this bad for your health?" she asked.

Another woman, in her 30s, said she was interested in the mobile phone but was self-conscious.

"What troubles me is that I may look weird if I'm talking with the phone pressed between my eyebrows," she said.

AFP

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/21/1074360813226.html

 

[Mythopoeika]

Will it turn your brain to jelly if you turn the volume up too loud?

 

[Anonymous]

I think hearing a call is going over the health of the user is it not.

 

[brianellwood]

Will it turn your brain to jelly if you turn the volume up too loud?

thought this had already happened to millions of walkman users.
Seem to remember the military experimenting with this way back. I had a walkie talkie that used a mic which you wore on your throat for noisy battlefield coms.
Used to do a trick in which you warmed and dried out a sheet of brown paper then held it between you and your mate's ears by squashing heads together, then holding the leads to your loudspeaker -they hold one lead, you hold the other, quite safe as the voltages are low- turn up the volume and presto! you both hear the music. (just an aside )

 

[stonedog3]

why was the brown paper wet???????


Kath

 

[brianellwood]

Paper absorbs water and in this case the paper acts as a 'dielectric' which must not conduct electricity, so if it's damp it doesn't work. The idea was developed into the quad electrostatic speaker beloved of hi fi maniacs with plenty of cash. I never had the money so I had to get my friend round to listen to my vinyls.
maybe thin plastic sheet might work . Anyone game for pressing heads?

 

[stonedog3]

so you want to press heads huh?

drying out normal dampness then, not that the paper was soaked in, say, beer forst!

Kath

 

[Anonymous]

hey beavis, he said bone phone.

ehe h eh eh he hehehehhehheh he eh

 

[Yithian]

It never really caught on, did it?

 

[EnolaGaia]

It never really caught on, did it?

It wasn't a new technology, and earlier products providing audio via bone conduction didn't last long in the marketplace (even though they worked fine).

At the end of the Seventies there was the Bone Fone - a portable AM/FM radio housed in a sort of padded horse collar that transmitted audio into / through your shoulder and collar bones. It worked fine for allowing you to listen privately to audio without blocking your ears with headphones.

​

For more pics and info, see:

https://www.forcesofgeek.com/2014/08/the-technological-breakthough-of-1979.html

After the novelty wore off the product faded away - mainly for the same reasons that undoubtedly doomed it in the mobile phone context:

- It was heavy and bulky (as was necessary for the mechanical transduction of the sound output).
- It was prone to slipping off or into a suboptimal position if you couldn't figure out how to secure it.
- Battery life was far less than for ordinary Walkman style radios (owing to the power-hungry mechanical transduction).

Similar bone conduction was offered as a high-end audio option in one or more upper-tier automobiles, built into the seat's headrest. This may have been offered more than once from the 1980s onward. I'm not sure if it was OEM / factory equipment or something offered by a third party (e.g., a high-end seat manufacturer like Recaro).

 

[EnolaGaia]

Bone conduction was also used as a technology for aiding the hearing-impaired. In 1998 Daewoo introduced the Bone Phone - an ordinary desktop phone with a special handset including a rounded projection or hump containing a transducer. This transducer (when placed near bone) allowed the listener to "feel" the sound output. This Bone Phone technology was also marketed as a helpful feature for use in noisy (e.g., industrial) environments.

PHOTO: Popular Science, December 1998, p. 82.​

Bone Phone
by Technology Review
Jul 1, 1998
Most devices designed to help the hard-of-hearing simply amplify sound. This approach doesn’t work well for people with severe defects in the outer or middle ear. Daewoo Technologies of Lyndhurst, N.J. has developed a telephone that takes a different approach: sending vibrations directly to the inner ear through the bones in the head. We hear mostly by “air conduction,” with sounds traveling through the ear canal and middle ear to the inner ear, where they are translated into nerve impulses that go to the brain. But we also hear via “bone conduction,” and Daewoo’s phone exploits this effect. A knob in the center of the earpiece is pressed to a bony part of the head and transmits vibrations directly to the inner ear. The phone’s makers say the instrument could also be useful for people with normal hearing who work in noisy environments such as construction sites.

SOURCE: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/400223/bone-phone/

 

[Xanatic*]

You can currently buy bone headphones for running. I could see that being useful, as I guess you can still hear traffic etc around you.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

I recently acquired a free set of bone-phones courtesy of the Amazon Vine programme.
I rated them 4 out of 5, due to their light weight and secure and comfortable fit, which makes them perfect for listening to audio when you're out and about doing something active, but still want to be aware of external noises. One star deducted though for the rather poor bass response. I guess picking up sound waves through your facial bones is never going to sound quite as impressive to the audiophile as decent quality earbuds actually jammed into your ears,
For my rail commutes, I would probably still favour my Jabra Elite wireless earbuds, even though they feel less secure and I've had to search for one on the floor of a rail carriage more than once.

 

[Herr Cloaca]

Here's a video about the Bone Fone