Mobiado and Aston Martin show how phone and car can get along beautifully

13 years, 7 months ago - 31 March 2011

With all the trinkets and gizmos we pack onto ourselves before we leave the house, do we really need a physical car key? Aston Martin clearly doesn't think so. The British purveyor of luxury GTs was among the first to replace the key ignition with a push-button.

Then the company teamed up with its watchmaking partner Jaeger-LeCoultre to incorporate a transponder into branded timepieces designed to lock and unlock its cars. Now Aston is taking things one step further, and soliciting the services of the mobile phone to get there.

Created in collaboration with Canadian luxury cellphone company Mobiado, this concept phone was just unveiled at the BaselWorld watch and jewelry expo in Switzerland. It's called the CPT002, and it's one of the slickest gadgets out there. It can lock and unlock your car like a proximity fob, but that's just the start. The phone will also interface wirelessly with such social media websites as Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to help you locate the friends you're meeting or automatically update them on the progress of your road trip or track day. It's also designed to allow the car to access the phone's accelerometer to help prepare for an impending crash.

All that is packed into a slick design that suspends a transparent sapphire crystal capacitive touch screen between two platinum bars that house the processor, battery, SIM card and all the rest.