Cell Phone Design
My cell phone has a speakerphone feature to allow me the use of the device “hands free.” This, while potentially annoying in public (like that stupid walkie-talkie feature pioneered by Nextel and co.), proves quite useful while on hold with one's ISP, for example, or for taking tech support calls from clients...typing and talking. On many a cell phone, the speaker used for this feature is found on the back of the phone, which gets covered when you put it down on most any surface thereby severely muffling sound and rendering this feature useless. Conversely, the microphone used is the same used during normal operation located on the front of the phone; this means you can't cheat bad design by flipping it upside-down because the microphone then becomes unusable for the same reason the speaker doesn't work so well in the scenario above.
Good Design Decision for today:
My cell phone (LG VX4500) has a little raised nub near the speaker. This serves to allow the speaker more-or-less free access to a sliver of nearby air and to eventually excite my oversensitive eardrums. It's loud and surprisingly very clear; partially (I think) because the surface upon which it rests is usually hard enough to reflect sound fairly well. I notice also that the speaker enclosure appears deeply concave. The only reason that I can ponder for this (besides "it looks cooler") is to allow for diffusion of reflected sound from a hard surface. This may very well represent another conscious design decision.
Life is Good. And these LG Engineers are making mine just a little better.