Like Follow Follow Why does this kickstarter for a Windows 10 phone even exist?

Who out there is excited for a new Windows 10 Mobile phone? Did your eyes just light up and your heart skip a beat? You're in the very small minority that cares about Windows 10 Mobile then.

For some reason, the Japanese company NuAns is kick starting a Windows 10 Mobile phone. It would be a great idea if Windows 10 Mobile was relevant at all, but it's not. With only 0.7% of the worldwide smartphone marketshare as of Q1 2016 (that's worse than the 1.7% ending Q3 2015), according to Gartner, the mobile platform is as a good as dead.

Even Microsoft knows it, which is why we're seeing the company pivot towards providing its excellent apps and services on iOS and Android instead.

The dream of carrying just your Windows 10 phone and using Continuum and a dock to transform it into a desktop PC was an idealistic pursuit, but ultimately one nobody cared for. Each of us is a multiple device person with each device serving a different purpose. 

With so little marketshare, and more importantly, such a puny selection of apps, you have to wonder what NuAns is thinking with its campaign for the NEO phone. The company's asking for $725,000 to produce its phone, but who the heck is going to buy it?

The niche guy you say! Well, of course, Windows 10 Mobile is a niche — not by choice, but by Microsoft's own failure.

Like a thick old Nokia Lumia smartphone, the NEO isn't competing with the ultra-thin flagship iPhones and Android phones on the market.

IMAGE: NUANS

As a phone, the NEO is decidedly midrange. It has a 5-inch HD display (1,280 x 720), Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via microSD card), and a 3,350 mAh battery. On the back is a 13-megapixel f/2.0 aperture camera and on the front is a 5-megapixel f/2.4 aperture camera. Yeah...not exciting. But at least it has a reversible USB-C port!

Instead of performance, NuAns is banking on customizability. The NEO has two back cover panels that are interchangeable and the company hopes to sell a variety of different materials for each cover (i.e. wood, plastic, leather, etc.). There's even a cover with a slot for storing cash or credit cards.

IMAGE: NUANS

Don't want to buy their cover panels? No problem. The company's planning to make the designs available for users to 3D print for themselves.

Not to totally poo-poo over NuAns — I applaud them for taking this risk — but they are almost certainly destined for failure. 

Windows 10 doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of gaining popularity and catching up to iOS and Android.

The NEO phone is something Windows phone fans needed years ago. And even if it had launched then, it's questionable if it would have found any success at all seeing as Windows Phone 7 and 8 were flops as well.

To NuAns, I say good luck. There are still 38 days left to the NEO phone's campaign and the company's already received more than $37,000 in crowdfunding at the time of this writing. 

Who knows, maybe the phone will get funded and the few people who backed it for $399.99 (early bird special) will be able to enjoy a device that has swappable panels.

This week in IoT crowdfunding: buds, bumpers, babies and bricks

If you’ve got big ideas, big dreams, big ambitions, crowdfunding has become one of the waysto bridge the gap between your world-saving concept and actually saving the world. We’re big fans of it ourselves.

Crowdfunding requires no loss of ownership in your business, offers virtually zero-cost publicity to your upcoming product, lets you test your market — and, critically, provides the funding required to initiate the first production run, especially for products requiring manufacturing design and capacity.

For us here at ReadWrite – with our focus on IoT and the connected world – we get a lot of crowdfunding pitches. A lot. Really. Sometimes they make us laugh. Or think. Or throw up a little in our mouths.

So we want to bring you an ongoing round-up of the next wave of IoT inventors and their potentially leading technology. We’re not going to hold our opinions, either – like New Cokeor Jarts, not every idea is a good idea.

But you should feel free to disagree with us, however you feel. Comment below, send us email, mock us, praise us…it’s all ok. We want to start a discussion around these ideas. We want you to tell us what projects we overlooked, too. Oh, and you could also fund them if you want. (But just so we’re clear, we’re not your financial advisor…make your own choices.)

The first product on our list is less about leisure and more about life-saving. In fact, its successful funding could help save the newborns in developing countries where infant mortality rates are far too high.

Neopenda is a wearable vital signs monitor in the form of a hat worn by newborns – it monitors and sends critical vital sign details, such as heart and respiratory rates, blood oxygen saturation, and temperature to an app.

If you want one of these devices yourself, you are out of luck in this particular campaign: The goal here is to raise the required funds to both develop and deploy the first batch of Neopenda devices to Uganda. This batch will be used to perform a study that the creators hope will prove their technology and make it possible for them to expand its reach out into the world.

What you do get is the satisfaction of knowing that your contribution goes to assisting in the lifesaving work done in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) facilities in developing countries. At $100, you can receive the photo and a story about how the unit you sponsored was used to care for a baby during the study. Additionally, you receive a commemorative Neopenda hat, sans the sensor, to keep.

PROS: Undeniably noble cause…if the technology is proven, could very well help save lives in developing countries where 98% of infant deaths occur.

CONS: Uganda has to approve the proposed study, and the device itself hasn’t been fully developed yet….but hard to debate the goal of this tech.

You can do things like have your creation trigger when you reach your step goal in FitBit, or light up when you receive a tweet. It also integrates into existing building bricks so you don’t have to buy a whole new set to take advantage of Brixo’s range of features.

Backers at the $35 level receive a Brixo starting kit including a smart battery case, motor, 10 2×1 bricks, 2 2×2 bricks, 20 4×1 bricks, an LED light, and light switch. For a little more, you can increase your reward at various levels up to a Mad Scientist package including 243 parts at $159.

PROS: Well into the development phase….if we want more kids interested in STEM careers, these kinds of toys seem to be a great way to engage…one of the editors is an energy nerd, and he thinks any way to get people to think of electricity beyond their power bill is cool.

CONS: Kids, electricity, batteries, what could go wrong?…What sound does Brixo make when my Roomba sucks up one of the blocks? Will it call for help from inside my dog’s gut?….Macaulay Culkin had to hook up his flame throwers and giant swinging wooden beams manually while this generation of kids could just use Brixo and Amazon Echo….“Alexa, release the tarantula”…wait, is that a pro or con?

When we think of intelligence, we typically think of what’s between our ears. But what if you could have an intelligent object… IN your ears?

Enter the Nuheara IQbuds, a product that boasts the ability to enhance not only the way you hear audio from your smartphone, tablet, or PC, but also in your immediate area. You can use them like any other pair of Bluetooth-enabled earbuds, but when you’re not on a call, they enhance the sound around you to boost your hearing so you can better understand people talking to you in noisy environments.

They’re not hearing aids, but they do help improve the way you experience audio in your natural environment. This particular product would be most interesting to people that use their phone constantly throughout the day, and find themselves in loud environments where hearing the person in front of you can be difficult.

The entry price for a pair of these earbuds is roughly $190 on Indiegogo. This saves you about $80 off the retail price once they hit the shelves.

PROS: Slick design…Hard to find good, reliable Bluetooth earbuds without the battery-anchor, so these are great…hearing in crowded, noisy environments is annoying to everyone, and nothing says “Please, don’t engage with me” like noise-cancelling headphones, so these let you be more social….should be standard issue for every teenager frankly….awesome for planes.

CONS: At the high end of earbud pricing, but given what they can accomplish, maybe it’s not really a con.

Enter eBumper – an innovative and unique take on bumper displays. With eBumper, you can use your phone to control an e-paper display that lets you customize what appears on the back of your car, on the fly.

The device itself can be preordered through Kickstarter for $219 and has a built-in port for a steel security cable and suction cups. And it’s waterproof for rainy days.

This would be a cool solution for Uber drivers that want to get their customers’ attention, businesses that want to easily advertise their latest specials on fleet vehicles, and just about anyone that wants an easy way to tell the driver behind them to back off.

PROS: A cool solution to a problem everyone seems to think they need daily, at least on my commute…Like use of e-paper for low power output and light-less design to meet regulatory restrictions….beats cleaning the sticky bumper sticker residue off your car after that ill-thought-out political endorsement you made last year….price tag is higher but tolerable.

CONS: eBumper: because you’ve run out of space for redneck bumper stickers and need to advertise your 24/7 bail bonds business…I’d be worried this will degenerate into all kinds of content being flashed at you as you drive by, which could be a pro, too, I guess…I expected something a bit more integrated than a special tablet with suction cups or magnets and a steel security cable….how many accidents will happen will texting a middle finger emoticon to my eBumper at that jackass in the SUV?

If you see IoT crowdfunding ideas, let us know. We’ll take a look…or at least try not to look away.

(Disclaimer: We pick these ideas based on our editorial team’s interest or outrage. Some of our crowdfunding ideas were developed at Wearable IoT World Labs, a leading IoT accelerator, and ReadWrite is part of the Wearable IoT World family. We’re not shilling, but there will occasionally be coincidences. But feel free to vent at us. Nuheara is one of ours.)