Why can't the iPhone see through walls?

Davey Winder
Thursday, 02 October 2008 18:18

Your IT - Mobility

Hands up anyone who was disappointed as a kid when those x-ray specs they spent their pocket money on turned out be a pile of useless crap which most certainly did not give you 'knicker vision' as you expected? The good news is that boffins may now have invented an x-ray mobile phone that does work...

This probably has to rate as the most bizarre mobile phone yet, and that is saying something when you consider that they play music, act as television in your pocket, connect you to the Internet and even provide step-by-step directions courtesy of satellites in the sky.

For most people an iPhone 3G is pretty much the pinnacle of mobile telephony as far as wow factoring is concerned. Not only does it do everything, it does it all in great style.

But can your iPhone see through walls?

Gotcha! It may not be an iPhone beater but the folk working at the KDDI research and development labs in Tokyo think they may have a unique selling point that Apple has not thought of. The ability to see through walls with a mobile phone .


OK, so not perhaps the most obviously useful ability, but a wow factor function none the less.

The concept mobile is driven by Real Space See-through Mobile software which, despite still being prototyped, claims to use a combination of acceleration and geomagnetic sensors, coupled to a GPS chip, to be able to accurately plot its surroundings and render them in 3D using OpenGL on screen.

Surroundings including, so the reports suggest, whatever happens to be on the other side of the wall in front of you. Knicker watchers will be disappointed once more, as it seems this phone will be about as much use as those x-ray specs in that regard.

As if the story needed anything else to rank it higher on the oddity scale, apparently the phone also comes with a calory counting device to report on your energy burning while out walking. I cannot help wondering if this thing can make and receive telephone calls though...