ZTE’s Project CSX is an effort to build a new device designed with input from the public. The company announced plans to crowdsource development of a phone last month, and now the first round of voting is open.
People have already submitted hundreds of ideas. Now you can upvote your favorites to help ZTE pick the 20 most popular concepts before choosing 3 to move forward on.
ZTE acknowledges it’ll take more than votes for an idea to make the next cut: there’s also a panel of judges that will help make sure the ideas meet the somewhat vague rules (products need to be mobile, technologically feasible by 2017, and affordable).
The 3 winning ideas will be announced on September 12th and then ZTE will “move onto the concept phase.”
Voting has just begun, but some popular ideas include:
- A phone that comes with Ubuntu Touch as the primary or secondary operating system… or maybe with no OS at all, making it easy for users to install their own
- A hacker/mod-friendly phone
- A better version of the Axon 7 smartphone with more storage, a few design tweaks, and a few spec changes
- A flexible display that can be used as a second screen for a smartphone
- A modular phone (which is an idea ZTE has considered before)
ZTE is hoping to conclude the concept phase by October 19th , when a finalist will be chosen and awarded a trip to the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (there are also cash prizes for other finalists).