💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 3099.gmi captured on 2023-09-08 at 18:21:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2011-05-07 11:19:54
PaperPhone, Queen's University, Canada The PaperPhone is used by being bent or
written upon.
A prototype flexible smartphone made of electronic paper has been created by
Canadian researchers.
The PaperPhone can do all the things bulkier smartphones can do such as make
and take calls, send messages, play music or display e-books.
The gadget triggers different functions and features when bent, folded and
flexed at its corners or sides.
"Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," said
creator Dr Roel Vertegaal.
The device emerged from a collaboration between researchers at the Human Media
Lab at Queen's University, Canada and Arizona State University's Motivational
Environments Research group.
"This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive
paper," said Dr Vertegaal in a statement. "You interact with it by bending it
into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a
pen."
The millimetres thick prototype is built from the same e-ink technology found
in Amazon's Kindle e-book reader and this is bonded to flex sensors and a
touchscreen that interprets drawings and text written on it.
The prototype was created in order to investigate how easy it is for people to
use bending and flexing to control such a device. The early version is
connected to a laptop to interpret and record the ways test subjects flexed it.
Dr Vertegaal predicted that widespread use of larger versions of the PaperPhone
might make the paperless office a reality.
The PaperPhone prototype will be on display on 10 May at the Computer Human
Interaction conference in Vancouver.
At the same show the research team plan to show off a device they called the
Snaplet. This device takes on different functions depending on how it is worn
and bent.
The wristband is a watch when convex, a PDA when flat and a phone when concave.