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Nokia Unveils Shape Changing Nano-phone Concept
An anonymous reader writes "Morph, a joint nanotechnology concept developed by Nokia Research Center and the University of Cambridge, has gone on display as part of the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The concept demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform the gadget into radically different shapes. Nokia said that elements of Morph might be integrated into handheld devices within seven years, though initially only at the high end."
What's with this constant focus on e-toys? This is news for nerds, stuff that matters, not what $800 gadget will make you look like a networked, tech-minded businessman.
They spend that money on a cell phone where I can actually *hear* the person clearly on the other end?
In unrelated news, the inventor of Silly Putty sued Nokia for violating it's patent "re-transmission of news and other media via the transfer of newsprint by chemically-induced process."
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Better pictures can be found here.
I've always wanted to have a real-life shoe phone. I can just see the next staff meeting -
<ring>
"Kai, I think your phone is ringing."
<ring>
"Oh, sorry. I'll get it."
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
From Motorola, we have the MOTOHOLE, which is a miniscule phone that can be inserted up the rectum of the next weird-ass gadget lover. Comes standard with Bluetooth 2.2 (since most people using Bluetooth talk out of their ass anyway) and auto-answer with butt clenching.
P.S. Don't ask about Caller ID or Voicemail. It's a prototype.
Cool design is...well cool.. but if this included flexible circuits, displays, etc. to make it function (even if fragile or only in the most basic way) I'd be very interested in reading more on the underlying tech.
There's a long way between design concept and all the technical risks being retired.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando
... is this really a good idea? Especially when you discover you accidentally rolled up your phone in and threw it away with your newspaper
Vaporware!!!!
Looks kinda cool. I would be quite happy with screens that aren't completely angular. Would be great for the next iteration of wearable computing.
my concept of "solid air". This is a new idea that will allow us to build houses and other building from room temperature solidified air. These houses will be eco-friendly and cheap.
I expect the technology required to create "solid air" will be invented by someone, somewhere, by 2016, or perhaps later.
I don't really know how many people are going to want to play with their gadgets as though they were silly putty, but this strikes me as something that would greatly enhance a device's resistance to wear, tear, drops, and falls. I could see this having applications in particularly rough environments, if nothing else.
does it blend?
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I've had a stretchable hand-held all my life. I'm sure it provides more enjoyment than a cell phone ever will. Now if I could just figure out how to set it on "vibrate"...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This looks like something from Star Trek!
If only we could warp drive and the whole Utopian society thing working too.
what's that now?
Soon you'll have to demonstrate that your phone can't be molded into a knife or shuriken before you're allowed through. Nor a nunchaku or brass knuckles, knowing airport security...
I like basketball!!1!
For example, you can see that the person wearing it is a complete tool without having to wait for them to open their mouth and say something idiotic. These are really time-saving gadgets when you think about it.
OPK sucks!
This must the prototype for the T-1000. So it's probably safe to assume it's as good as indestructible, except for if you throw it in liquid steel.
Will it bend? That is the question.
Flexible polymer smoke. Don't breathe this!
Show me one example of that.
What we see on the photos is at best a mockup made out of plexiglas and at most likely a render.
Lets see, a completly transparent screen. Because as well know nanotech makes things transparent. Apparently in a mere seven years we will have a material that looks a nice uniform light transparant green but can be used as pixels, wires, battery, antenna, electronics, it can be be reshaped at will without deforming at random.
In seven years?
Come on, this isn't a concept, it is just wishfull thinking with absolutly no bases in reality.
If you can shape a screen, how do you stop it from deforming when you don't want it to? Do you enjoy reading leaflets outside where the wind flaps them about?
I am just getting to old for this non-sense. I don't mind concept products where designers and engineers wonder "what if". But please at least use tech that MIGHT BE. After all if we are randomly speculating I can come up with far more intresting stuff. How about a mobile phone that sits on your eye like a contact lense and is controlled by thought? In seven years? I can even show you how one might look, someone got a place to host a picture of a contact lense?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Maybe it'll morph into something that can make a decent phone call!
The subminiature phones are good news for a certain category of users that have a special, warm place in their, err, body for their small cell phone.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
If I could deliver this by, say, 1931 would that be OK?
Aerogel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerogel
For what it's worth, I remember seeing a plastic mockup/concept, made by Nokia and exhibited at a Finnish science centre, of an internet tablet about a decade ago. It basically showed a web page, news headlines, was supposed to have a touch screen and wireless internet etc. This was in 1996 or 97, when mobile phones and dial-up internet connections were just breaking through into the mainstream, but Nokia basically followed it through to a hundred percent.
Granted, this seems a fair bit more cutting edge, with what appears to be reliance on technology that at the moment presumably is purely theoretical, and I don't believe for a second they can translate the concept into real life in seven years (which technically isn't what they're saying, just that they'll have something incorporating the technology), but I don't doubt that they're completely serious about pursuing this, either.
Ohhh... shape CHANGING... heh heh... I read shape *charging*.
Yes, that probably is better.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
i'm suddenly remembering those slap bracelets that went around in middle school. imagine your cell phone on your wrist, and then popping straight when you tug at it when it rings? =P
heck, that sounds like an awfully good patent to troll! (where's my laywer?)
http://kered.org
The video is more enlightening:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs
So, let me get this straight: I can wrap my phone around my wrist for easy transport, then the phone rings, I have to un-mold it from my wrist, figure out which end is up, then reshape it into a phone, then re-mold it back to my wrist?
Seems like the general shape phones are in and have been for most of the last century has worked pretty well. Why reinvent the wheel?
Health Insurance Quotes
totally amazing how it calculates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-YcBVEnLT8
Always when someone uses the "nanotech" buzzword, I'm reminded of a study (from Helsinki Univ of Tech) that nanotech isn't a field of technology. It's just a marketing trick. When you actually dig up the patents, social networks and case studies from corporations, the conclusion emerges that "nanotech" is consists of four different fields of technology that don't "talk to each other". They are measurement instrumentation, materials, pharma/chemicals and semiconductors. For example, a pharmaceutical chemist doesn't talk to the semiconductor physicist. Only instrumentation is actually applied in all fields.
"Advanced materials" doesn't sound as cool as "nanotechnology".
Eh...I wouldn't recommend lighting up with his car's cigarette lighter....
Huh?