Canadian researchers develop flexible phones

Canadian researchers from Queen University, have developed a prototype flexible Smartphone interface that allows users to interact with applications on the phone by bending and manipulating the display.

The prototype uses a 9.5 cm (diagonal) thin film flexible E Ink display that has been customized with pressure sensors that monitor the user's actions and interact directly with the phone software.


Nanotechnology investigation which is being described as revolutionary shows how the computers or phones will be flexible in the near future. Queens university researches produced paper phone with the collaboration of US’s Arizona University’s researchers.

The results show users preferred bend gestures and bend gesture pairs that were conceptually simpler, e.g., along one axis, and less physically demanding. For actions with a strong directional cue, they found strong consensus on the polarity of the bend gestures (e.g., navigating left is performed with an upwards bend gesture, navigating right, downwards). This implies that bend gestures that take directional cues into account are likely more natural to users.


The paper suggests that bend gestures may be of utility for people with motor skill limitations that prevented the use of other input systems. Additionally, bend gestures are potentially usable without visual engagement with the device and when one was interacting directly with the display but needed to avoid occluding areas of the display. Users reported bend gestures as appropriate for navigating pages in a book reader, which could take advantage of the analog properties of the bend gesture to allow for variable speed scrolling based on the degree of bend.