Use Your Phone as Surround Sound Speaker-

Stefan Damm and Arnold Ahrer,students from the Mobile Computing-department of the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Austria) have created a small solution to enable real surround sound through mobile phones

It works by using four different mobile phones, which have to be placed into the corners of the room. Essentially, the phones are turned into speakers, albeit with a bit more intelligence than the usual speaker. A central control PC is connected via WLAN to the phones and is able to control them in real time.

Once all phones are connected, the PC starts the sound on all phones at the same time. The user can now move the sound source on the graphical interface of the server. This automatically adjusts the volume of the different speakers, thus leading to the impression that the sound is moving around in the room.

3D Sound on current mobile phones might mainly be a marketing gag – like the sound effects found on Nokia phones like the N95. It certainly does sound nice to have your ringtones swirl around and it works surprisingly well. But of course, it’s just simulated surround with two small speakers that are close together.