Warning: It won’t be full featured, but the sound quality is apparently good. The question is who the target market is. People who worry about forgetting their phone? Those who like the James Bond (or perhaps Get Smart) factor? People who hate carrying things? That part remains to be seen:
Once implanted in a person’s molar, the transducer caused the tooth to vibrate in response to radio signals. The physical structure of the jaw carried the tooth’s vibrations to the inner ear, where the user, and no one else, could perceive them as sound. The implant’s designers held dramatic demonstrations of this principle using a vibrating wand. Participants confirmed that they could hear crystal clear voices through their teeth…
[D]evelopers had to make numerous modifications to existing cell phone designs to create a complete, working cell-phone implant. Rather than using a single piece inserted under a person’s skin, cell-phone implants are modular in design. Implantation requires several small, separate incisions and local anesthetic. The different pieces communicate with each other using flexible circuitry and conductive tattoo ink, and each piece is specially designed to be as small and comfortable as possible.
In this article, we’ll look at all the parts of the cell-phone implant and how they communicate with each other. We’ll also examine the pros and cons of making your phone part of your body.
The full story, “How Cell Phone Implants Work,” appears at HowStuffWorks.
