Sorry, Samsung Infuse: Your title as the nation’s thinnest 4G smartphone was just considerably trumped. Queen’s University’s Human Media Lab and Arizona State University’s Motivational Environments Research Group have created a paper smartphone – called, ingeniously, PaperPhone – with all the functionality as the bulkier versions in our pockets. “This is the future, everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,” creator and director of the lab Roel Vertegaal says. “This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.”
If you don’t believe PaperPhone can do everything your iPhone can, take a look at the video below. It can act as your e-reader or PMP – and obviously, as your phone. And it’s not just its width (or lack thereof) that makes it impressive, the phone will flex to your pocket, purse, or wherever you choose to put it.
The PaperPhone prototype has a 3.7-inch Bloodhound electrophorectic display and uses an E Ink processor. It’s constructed of thin film bend sensors on the backside of the display. Software applications are triggered by users’ gestures – pretty familiar to how the average smartphone operates, except that these gestures aren’t limited to a hard, flat screen and users can bend and prod it to manipulate PaperPhone’s functions. Byron Lahey, Audrey Girouard, Winslow Burleson, and Vertegaal studied 10 participants’ commonly-used movements to implement gesture input recognition into the flexible device. “Bending the: (1) side of display, up/down (2) top corner, up/down (3) bottom corner, up/down” were the most popular gestures.
The researchers admit there’s a long way to go when it comes to this technology, but that eventually this type of hardware (yes, it’s still technically hardware) will see “mass adoption.”
Correct me if I am wrong. The bending interface seems rather annoying , requiring odd gestures that are not intuitive. Unless they improve it somehow…….
This would never be mass produced in the near future, and when and if it does get produced, it will be broken easily. Imagine putting it in your pocket the incorrect way, and it bending it in half, thus destroying the vulnerable microchip. I'm not going to start commenting about inputs of this device. Nevertheless, very creative.
If it was April1st I would believe this to be a joke. The concept of bending a phone as the only method of input is ridiculous at best. The "handle" attached to the thing would also be cumbersome and significantly reduces the attraction of a "paper" phone. That being said, they did say that the technology has a long way to go so perhaps they already see these problems and just want to present their achievements so far in this area. Also, I'm sure the "bend only" input method will probably be abandoned eventually. It's a great feature if used in addition to touch screen. The e-ink would have to be scrapped too since most of us would rather have a smart phone with full color to watch movies, play games etc.
So, great idea, but has a looong way to go in my opinion.
Rediculous. It is just a display driven by software from a computer! I am so tired of all these reports by under educated so called journalists!
If it was a touchscreen it would be even more awsome, because you wont be able to sell a phone with no other input method than bending it.
another problem might be the durability… how many times can you bend it until it breaks? I guess you will need a new screen soon…
a pure geek phone: not really useful, but looks cool