Smartphones and computers are begging to flex their muscles with research from Queen's University Human Media Lab, where they are making computers as flexible as paper and operated by bending. Operation is a snap with the snaplet armband smartphone (video follows).
The smartphone prototype, called PaperPhone is best described as a flexible iPhone. It does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone calls, but its display consists of a 9.5 cm diagonal thin film, flexible E Ink display. The flexible form of the display makes it much more portable than any current mobile computer: It will shape itself to your pocket.
The demo 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.
Being able to store and interact with documents on larger versions of these light, flexible computers means that offices will no longer require paper or printers.
They claim that the invention heralds a new generation of computers that are super lightweight, thin-film and flexible. They use no power when nobody is interacting with them. When users are reading, they don't feel like they're holding a sheet of glass or metal.
Dr. Vertegaal unveiled his paper computer at the Association of Computing Machinery's CHI 2011 (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver. An article on a study of interactive use of bending with flexible thin film computers was published at the conference, where the group is also demonstrating a thin film wristband computer called Snaplet.
The development team included researchers Byron Lahey and Win Burleson of the Motivational Environments Research Group at Arizona State University (ASU), Audrey Girouard and Aneesh Tarun from the Human Media Lab at Queen's University, Jann Kaminski and Nick Colaneri, director of ASU's Flexible Display Center, and Seth Bishop and Michael McCreary, the VP R&D of E Ink Corporation.