Man Installs Smartphone Dock in His Prosthetic Arm

t's an old adage that when life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade. Great advice, but what happens when life hands you a missing limb? Make a smartphone mount.

Though far from an insurmountable handicap, Briton Trevor Prideaux was born without a left arm, a not-insignificant inconvenience in our era of increasingly convenient - and hands-on - technology. For most of his life, and especially as smartphones have become ubiquitous, he's had to rely on uncomfortable ad hoc solutions, namely balancing his phone on the prosthetic, or placing it on a nearby surface.

However, thanks to a joint effort by medical experts and techies at Nokia, Prideaux is now able to use his smartphone with the same convenience as the rest of us. The solution is an ingenious custom fibercast prosthetic arm with a slot designed to accommodate a Nokia C7. Prideaux envisioned the concept himself and approached several developers, including Apple (who apparently declined), before finding interested ears at Nokia. With further help from technicians at the Exeter Mobility Centre, a working prototype was finished in just over a month. While the phone doesn't respond to any bionic commands - it simply fits snugly in the artificial limb - it is conveniently placed so that Mr. Prideaux can manipulate the device with his right hand, or remove it from its mount to speak. 

Living with a handicap is a challenge, and despite the gains made by that community in recent decades, having to remind everyone around you of your distinction can add injury to something that should never be seen as injury. While this device is custom, it has tremendous consumer implications and is a welcome step toward making certain that all of us, regardless of how abled we are, can participate in the society we're creating with ease. It's also, quite frankly, really, really cool looking.