Every year in the United States, LG Electronics invites the brightest talents in design to present their visions for the future of mobile phones. For this, the third annual Design the Future Competition, LG once again partnered with Autodesk, a leader in 2D and 3D design, engineering and entertainment software, and crowdSPRING, an online marketplace for creative services. From among hundreds of ingenious and visionary designs, LG presented awards to more than 40.

This year’s competition welcomed the judging talents of Russell Bobbitt, a world-renowned movie prop master who has worked on a variety of visually stunning films such as Star Trek, Iron Man and Iron Man 2™. Bobbitt served as a guest judge and rewarded Dua Xiong’s cutting-edge design, titled “Flutter”, with the Prop Master’s Choice award. A smartphone that fans open to reveal a beautiful, radial-scrolling OLED touch screen, Flutter won both an array of superb prizes and the chance to appear in Bobbitt’s next blockbuster film. The concept phone has already been developed into a non-working mock-up, and was displayed at an Iron Man 2 promotional event on May 11.

Over 400 entries were submitted to compete for over US$80,000 in prizes. Despite being limited to a single 1,024 x 3,072 pixel image per entry (to make things easier for the judges), the contestants excelled, producing a wide range of wonderfully attractive and innovative designs. To help the participants best present their ideas and to give them a guide to previous years’ entries, LG also supplied a downloadable sample entry and template on the competition homepage.

All of the entries were judged on three criteria: creativity/originality (40%), need fulfillment (30%), and feasibility (30%). The 15 judges, who all put the designs through three rounds of rigorous assessment, this year included Gwen Frederick, a contestant in the 2009 event. Impressed with her talent and creative promise, LG hired Frederick as a full time employee after seeing her innovative designs, which won two Honorable Mentions.

The first place winning entry was a team effort by Zack Filbert, Chris Carpenter, James Connors and Kees Luyendijk, four second year industrial design students from the same design class in Virginia Tech. Based on their own extensive research, the four-man team used innovative forms and interfaces to create a smartphone designed for one-handed use. The winning design will remain confidential until LG releases it commercially in the near future.

The second place winning entry – titled Premium – is a 3D-interface mobile phone that connects with a car to adjust the in-car temperature, control the infotainment system, select seat memory, check tire pressure, gauge fuel levels, and much more besides. It should come as no surprise that the creator of this design, Nouphone Bansasine, is a professional car designer.

Among the raft of other great ideas, some phones offered accessories and concepts for the disabled. One honorable mention – a smartphone titled Atlas – docks into a base with a string of screens, so users can view multiple applications simultaneously.  The dock features a tracking system that senses hand gestures, letting users spin the pages in a loop and zoom in and out.

Another honorable mention – titled Surface – is a watch phone for the blind and features a Braille keypad and a unique shape, so you can distinguish which mode the phone is in just by touching it.

Though it didn’t win, the entry below – a phone that slides out and can be played as a guitar – is an intriguing concept and great fun too!

A few of the winning ideas will be tested with consumers, and the ones that are positively received may well be developed further. Watch this space!