Kyocera Wireless has teamed up with software developer Wildseed to introduce a new breed of phone geared toward teens and twenty-something's who have a penchant for gaming and personalization. Code-named Delta2 (D2), the new mobile style inverts the position of the keypad and the screen, while a variety of slip-on faceplates completely change the theme and features (such as sounds, ring tones, color screens, and user interface) of the phone. Scheduled to be released early next year, the phone is expected to cost less than $200 and the interchangeable skins should run between $25 and $40.

The keys to the Delta2 concept are Wildseed's Smart Skin intelligent faceplates and Smart Screen software. Basically, these faceplates (complete with keypad and a digital card) slide onto the naked D2 phone. Once placed on the mobile, the phone takes on the theme of the faceplate. For example, if you purchased a Smart Skin of your favorite baseball team, not only would the plastic be related to the team, so would the user interface. What does that mean? Well, the phone's screen could be the team's logo, the ring tone would play "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and preprogrammed Web links would be related to baseball and baseball players. It might even have a built-in baseball video game.

Specs-wise, the phone has all the features you'd expect from a cutting-edge CDMA phone, including 1xRTT high-speed data access, a speakerphone, call logs, a phone book, wireless Web access, and two-way messaging. Plus, the company plans to include an FM radio, 8MB of flash memory, and 16MB of RAM.

We looked at an early version of D2, and it does indeed seem more innovative than faceplate schemes of the past. We'll have a review of the product as soon as we get our hands on a shipping unit.

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