Shape-changing nanotechnology phone

It’s just a concept for now, but Nokia is projecting a future phone product that uses nanotechnology to be stretchable and flexible:

Finnish handset giant Nokia gave the industry a glimpse of the future on Monday, when it unveiled a shape changing mobile devices concept based on nanotechnology…

The concept demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform the gadget into radically different shapes.

Nanotechnology would enable the ultimate functionality delivering flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces…

Nokia said that elements of Morph might be integrated into handheld devices within seven years, though initially only at the high end. In the future however, the Finnish firm sees nanotechnology as one day leading to low cost manufacturing and the potential for integrating complex functionality at a low price.

Presuambly such a phone using nanotech materials would be less likely to break when dropped, which I do frequently to my Treo (no problem as yet, amazingly).

This product strikes me as relatively near-term. Now that we carry our phones all the time, it would be handy to have them be less, well, hard. Something more foldable and squishable would fit better in a pocket or on a wrist.

Improvements to phones are especially important to the developing world, where for quite a while to come they will often be people’s only computer. Credit: Slashdot. —Christine