One of the more interesting claims to come out of the mobile phone world in recent history has got to be Sanyo's "bone conduction" system. It sure sounds like a cool idea. We had visions of silent communications travelling up through our bones to our ears, where we would mysteriously hear them.

That's why Sid and I were so pleased to find the TS41, the bone conduction handset, at the Sanyo booth at CeBIT this year. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, we gave the handset a once over.

With the help of one of the folks from Sanyo's Japan office, we worked our way though the Japanese menus to a point were we could play some demo recordings. Then we gave it a shot.

But we didn't notice anything different. It just seemed as if a speakerphone type function was in use. No matter where we placed the handset on our cheeks or jaws, nothing special seemed to happen. When Sid was testing it, for example, I could hear the sound as plainly as he could. That's not a bone conduction system, that's a speakerphone.

We played around with it for a while, trying to find that "sweet spot" that we were sure was eluding us, the one where we would magically hear the sound from inside our ears, and not from the outside. But it never happened. We really have to question whether or not the entire concept was just part of a marketing strategy, and not really based on any new technology at all.

That would be a shame considering all of the other cool prototypes and new handsets that Sanyo has been showing recently. But for now, at least, we have to conclude that there is nothing to this technology. At least not in its current implementation.

It should be noted that we are aware that typical bone conduction systems are placed below/behind the ear. Sanyo claims this is not required for the TS41. If you go to the bottom of this page and click on the "related news" link to the original story from back in December, you will see that the official photo shows the phone on the jaw. This simply does not work in our experience.

The TS41 is a Japanese PDC phone and will not work on GSM or CDMA networks. It weighs 98g, has internal and external 65K TFT color displays, and is good for about 140 minutes of talk time, 400 hours of standby time.

More live photos of the Sanyo TS41 Bone Conduction handset from CeBIT 2004 are available on the following pages.