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Nokia's Humanform concept phone, not shaped like us (video)
We barely recovered from Nokia's futuristic concept buffet at Nokia World, but a new video has unearthed the deceptively named Humanform. Fortunately not shaped like a dolly, this teardrop device cooked up Nokia's in-house labs supposedly uses some as-yet unexplained nanotechnology, with a bendable transparent display and a fully touch sensitive casing. The segmented design also channels some Wiimote-esque gesture features and twist controls seen on the phone behemoth's Kinetic Device. An inert Humanform shell was also on show alongside it last month, although it didn't do much aside from bending. See if you agree with Nokia's vision of the mobile future after the break.
Nokia's kinetic future: flexible screens and a twisted interface (video)
Hidden within Nokia's Future Lounge, this very flexible display offers up a glimpse of what sort of thing we could possibly be dealing with when we roll up to Nokia World in 2021. The prototype Nokia Kinetic Device, including its display, can be flexed across both the vertical and horizontal planes -- with bending and twisting motions controlling the interface. If you bend the screen towards yourself, it acts as a selection function, or zooms in on any pictures you're viewing. In music mode, you can navigate, play and pause with the tactile interface. It's still a way off from arriving on phones, though Nokia is aiming to whet developers' appetites with this prototype. We may have seen some twisty interfaces already, but nothing packing a four-inch screen and built-in functionality like this. Nokia couldn't confirm the screen technology being used. Could that be a flexible AMOLED display? See those impressive viewing angles and contortions after the break and judge for yourself.%Gallery-137602%
Nokia patent application points to flexible phone displays
It may still be quite a ways from realizing its ambitious Morph concept, but it looks like Nokia has been toying around with the idea of flexible displays as of late, as evidenced by a just-published patent application (first filed back in 2008). Covering a "user interface, device and method for a physically flexible device," the application details (among other things) how a flexible display might be used on a phone to do things other than make it more portable. Most interestingly, that includes bending the phone into a particular shape to perform a specific task -- Nokia suggests rolling it into a can to search for a bar or pub, or bending it into a bowl to search for a restaurant. Not exactly the most imaginative examples, to be sure, although we're sure Nokia will have plenty of time to come up with some more interesting uses before any such phones actually hit the market. [Thanks, Anand]
Intel patent app reveals flexible display fabrication plans
No sooner than a furry display patent application surfaces from Philips, it looks like Intel has jumped on the patent-a-random-display bandwagon along with Apple and a few others. Of course, flexible displays have long since been a figment of reality, but the "method of fabricating flexible displays" patent tends to focus more on the snazzy new development methods than the screen itself. Essentially, Intel is looking to use a duo of flexible sheets to sandwich a "number of magnetic display elements" that have "magnetically controllable reflectivity" between the two; furthermore the location of the magnetic particles "with respect to the flexible non-conductive sheets determines the reflectivity of the pixel." The presumably conductive boards would eventually be aiming at cellphones, "portable web browsers," and GPS navigation systems, but considering the head start that quite a few competitors already have, we hope Intel engineers are a bit past the drawing board on this one.[Via UnwiredView]
