The Smarter Phone is a genius piece of design and intelligence that puts a fully functioning, customisable and upgradable by components smartphone in your hands.

I’ve been saying it for years: one day soon, we’re not going to be buying an Apple or Samsung flagship device. Instead, we’re going to be walking into a store (probably an Apple or Samsung store) and ticking a bunch of boxes based on what we want in the phone we’re about to buy. Touchscreen VS QWERTY keyboard, one camera or two, 5-inch or 7-inch. Everything decided by you then and there.

The Smarter Phone is a design by Bernat Lozano and Rocío García that has won second place in the Design for (Your) Product Lifetime Student Challenge and the idea is straight forward. It looks, functions and is a smartphone. Except, when it breaks (a bad drop, the camera goes fuzzy or a button kicks it) you simply strip the device open, buy a replacement part and carry on regardless.

Of course the immediate lifestyle problem is that you want a new smartphone every year, you want something to show off to your friends and you definitely don’t want to be stuck with the same piece of plastic for 5 years. What does that say about you as a trend-setter?

How about if I told you that by using the Smarter Phone instead of a new phone every year, you’d be doing your part to stop the dumping of unused electronic parts in far-flung (or not so far-flung) countries like Ghana?

This unnecessary wastage of technology is the driving force behind the designers who acknowledge that new technology like NFC arrives on the scene more often than poo on Patricia De Lille’s doorstep and they’ve theoretically made space for that in the phone.

Sure there’s a long way to go still and it’s far from a packaged solution or ideal product, but I think it’s a sign of the times and an omen of what’s to come: major manufacturers feeling the pressure of their discarded device cluttering the beaches of an African paradise, thus being forced into producing longer-lasting devices, user-upgradable hardware and fewer unit sales.

Make your money on deals with music companies. Oh wait…