RESEARCHERS at the Queen’s University Human Media Lab have developed the an interactive paper smartphone, which looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of paper.
While paper seems to be an archaic concept these days, the researchers recognised the interactivity with paper as a natural and non-fussy way of utilising devices.
Users can interact with the prototype PaperPhone by bending it, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen.
Quite ambitiously, Dr Roel Vertegaal, director of the Human Media Lab, has said that everything will look and feel like that within five years.
PaperPhone does everything a smartphone does, like store books, play music or make phone calls. But its display consists of a 9.5 cm diagonal thin film flexible E Ink display.
By making the display flexible, the PaperPhone is more portable than any current mobile device, and it can conform with the shape of the paper.
Dr Vertegaal will unveil his paper computer on May 10 at the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI 2011 (Computer Human Interaction) conference in Vancouver.
He claims larger versions of these light and flexible computers will quite ironically eliminate real paper or printers in offices.
Dr Vertegaal says paper has survived thus far because of how we interact with it. With e-paper here, documents can be stored digital and stacked like paper. The thin-film computers use no power when nobody is interacting with them.
The group is also demonstrating a thinfilm wristband computer called Snaplet.
