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Flexible smartphone curls up when it gets a call

The MorePhone is a very acrobatic smartphone. It's made with a flexible display and shape memory alloy wires. When a call comes in, it activates the wires and causes the whole phone to curl up. It's an unmistakeable visual cue that you've got someone on the line.

The curling smartphone was developed by researchers at Queen's University Human Media Lab in Canada. The thin electrophoretic display that makes the movement possible was manufactured by Plastic Logic, a company specializing in plastic electronics. The alloy wires can trigger the phone to curl up at all corners, or to curl back individual corners to indicate different events, like an incoming text message or e-mail.… Read more

Is your iPhone obsolete? Meet PaperPhone

How many times have you wanted to smash your phone when talking to annoying people? Thanks to research at Queen's University in Canada, you'll soon be able to crush that handset mercilessly. Well, almost.

The e-paper prototype PaperPhone has a 3.75-inch thin-film display and developers call it the world's first flexible smartphone (remember Nokia's patent application for one?). It can do everything a smartphone can, such as make calls, display books, and play music.

"This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," Queen's Human Media Lab Director Roel Vertegaal was quoted as saying in a release.

As seen in the vid below, the prototype is based on e-ink technology and is more like a bendable plastic sheet about the thickness of a conference badge. It can be operated by bending the corners to turn a page, squeezing to make a call, and even written on with a pen.

The lab has also been working on video game screens that are bent as a control input. … Read more