The Company [Motorola Mobility] is providing developer versions of the award-winning RAZR MAXX HD smartphone, and is looking for creative and talented engineers to push the boundaries in acoustics. This will be a rapid, iterative process over 6 weeks, with close collaboration between the students and Motorola engineers and designers... There will be a progress report due every second week as well as a final "Pitch" to Motorola executives at the end of the competition.

From the very beginning, I was fully aware that most of the other competitors would lean towards a design that would incorporate either additional powerful speakers that slide in/out of the phone or extend and retract from the phone to simulate a boombox. 
 

-Detachable parts can be forgotten.

-Phone will be immobilized when sharing music if music only comes from the phone.

-Having a speaker system that operates on the back of the phone may obstruct room for a phone case.

I had to come up with something different.

 

I started fiddling around with my phone, just staring at it from all angles, removing and playing with the phone case that protected my phone, when suddenly, I thought of what would be great for the challenge--a durable phone case that is also a wireless speaker system.

I didn't have a name for it yet, but the idea seemed promising. An idea like this would require special consideration from both mechanical and electrical elements.

An early prototype of said concept. Multiple speakers around each side, totalling up to 10. Dimensions are 141 mm x 79 mm x 21 mm. For comparision, the Motorola Droid RAZR MAXX HD phone: 131.9 x 67.9 x 9.3 mm. 

This thing was fat, but we weren't sure what size our electronics were going to be. We would need a Bluetooth chip for wireless interfacing with the phone, an onboard battery supply that is rechargable, and of course the speakers.

Research was done and found that having more speakers does not necessarily mean better sound quality. We joked about our mistake and agreed on having less, but larger speakers. We would only need 5 speakers, one on each side and on on the back.

 

Final Design
We also finally agreed upon a name--the SwitchCase,
a durable case that is also a wireless bluetooth speaker system. We were so happy about picking out a name that we even made a logo for it.

The SwithCase features 5 rectangular micro speakers placed on each side of the case, with the largest one on the back.

 

Here we have a section view showing that the speakers are well embedded into the case.

The largest electronic component of the SwitchCase would be the onboard battery supply. Here we have a mock up of how large the total circuit board (green) would be based on the size of the battery. 

To make all this wiring and circuity invisible to a user, a partition is used as a border between the circuit board and the phone.

 

1.The switchcase is adaptable. You can interface it with any motorola phone.

Here we have a section view showing that the speakers are well embedded into the case.

5. Unique, you would also be able to create surround sound by interfacing your phone with multiple SwitchCase devices. The Case is customizable in different colors and decorations for your personal uniqueness/preferences!

Results
Once all the presentations were given, the judges voted on who the winners--that is who got to go to Motorola to utilize their resources and use their own rapid prototyping machines to bring to life the winners' concepts. The SwitchCase was placed as a winner and at the moment, I am awaiting the details of how to take this to the next step.