Carbon Mobile
Carbon 1 Mk II

The Carbon 1 Mk II was an ambitious project conceived by founder and CEO Firas Khalifeh. It had a carbon fiber chassis that when woven together became stronger than steel but lighter than aluminium. The strong structural skin meant that the phone did not need a bulky internal metal frame which allowed the designers to make it thinner and lighter than rival smartphones. The phone, which took five years to develop, was inspired by Bauhaus design principles which are based on “form following function”. It had a very difficult birth given the complexity associated with using carbon fibre. The biggest challenge was that carbon fibre severely affected the RF performance of the phone. This was eventually overcome when the company developed a Hybrid Radio Enabled Composite Material (HyRECM) technology which merged carbon fiber with other materials to ensure that radio waves could be pass through the shell of the device. In the early days of manufacturing, it took up to three hours to form the carbon fiber shell used on the phone. Over time the company optimised the process and was able to reduce this to approximately 30 minutes, but it still required an experienced engineer to hand-cut the material and oversee the moulding process. The Carbon 1 Mk II was the first commercially available variant of the phone. The Mk 1 was a prototype design that was never mass-produced. The phone in the Mobile Phone Museum collection is “Founder Edition” of the Carbon 1 Mk II of which only 300 were made. When the phone launched in March 2021 it cost €799.