This prototype flexible mobile lets you interact with applications based on fold

We took a few years hearing about flexible displays, but still we have not been applied to any finished product. This may change if Samsung meets expectations this year and launches its first mobile with this technology, but even if you have not done, researchers at Human Media Lab at the University of Queens are already planning to go further.

In addition, they do it thinking that flexible displays should not only help to save space, but should also allow us to use their flexibility to interact with your device. And that is precisely what they have been implemented in a prototype of what could be the first smartphone with touch and flexible screen that allows us to perform certain functions, such as turning the pages of a digital book, depending on how we round.

Is this the future of flexible displays?

The prototype is called Reflex and equips a flexible OLED screen LG 720p and Android 4.4 operating system. On the back is a bending sensor and a motor haptic feedback, with which, according director of Human Media Lab Roel Vertegaal “represents a completely new way of physical interaction with flexible smartphones”.

Mobile vibrate, for example, to simulate the passage of pages

It also has a voice coil that allows the phone to simulate the frictional forces we apply through realistic vibrations on the screen. Taken together, these components get the device to simulate the physical forces that interact with it in the application you are using.

One of the examples that have shown how this translates is the digital book. As we turned the phone to the right, the pages are moved from right to left as they would in a normal book. In addition, the steeper the curve faster will the pages, so we’ll have a total control that we feel in our hands by sound and vibration.

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This technology also has been applied to a classic game like Angry Birds. As shown in the video, here the curvature of the screen will determine the force to launch the bird. Of course, in addition to these functions, the prototype can also be used as a normal smartphone. Of course, with an Android version somewhat outdated.

Flexible phones are just around the corner, but flexibility may initially be only meant to save space when we get up. Therefore, it is interesting to see the possible applications that this prototype is proposing for the immediate future of technology. When did you see everything in a commercial mobile? According to some researchers even, we might have to wait four or five years.