Wow! I didn’t think I’d be writing another post about Nokia so soon. I would have waited a few weeks and maybe had a post about Nokia Lumia’s progress report. But here we are! Within the last couple days, an awesome video of Nokia HumanForm concept phone hit the Internet and what I saw was pretty amazing not to share. After this post on bendy phones which are impressive enough, HumanForm from Nokia appears to be the next step. This too, is a kinetic device, meaning you can control the phone by bending it outwards and inwards. Nokia bills the HumanForm concept as “a visionary solution beyond touch screen and voice communication where technology becomes invisible and intuition takes over.” The coolest feature that I thought this phone had, was the tactile display. So if you were to take a picture of a furry animal, you’d be able to feel the texture of fur on your phone. The flexible display lets go of the touchscreen and makes your whole phone an interactive screen. Inside a soft plastic shell, there are hard segments containing circuit boards connected by ribbon cables. The multi-segment structure lets the device flex while still including some inflexible parts. Another exciting possibility is to have these phones charged by kinetic energy. If this becomes a reality, maybe one day, we will no longer have to deal with “batterygates”. .
Intuitive interaction
I see Siri as the very beginning of human and device interaction that is intuitive and not command-based. These phones will push that concept much further. These new Nokia concept phones will detect the mood of the caller as seen in the video. (I am not too excited about this feature though. I sometimes answer calls that I really don’t want to answer. Will my wariness show through? I need some clarity on this concept). These phones are probably not going to be seen in stores anytime soon. But since the technology exists, I feel, it is only a matter of time.
Bendable phones ready for the market?
In other news on mobile, Samsung announced that its flexible phones with AMOLED screens will hit the market as early as 2012. With its bestseller Galaxy SII, this company has been steadily rising against adversaries like Apple. Speaking of Apple, it is tantalizing to think what Apple designers and developers are doing about kinetic and flexible screen technologies. I am sure in the super-secret research labs in Cupertino maybe something is already brewing, touted to ‘change the world’ as Steve jobs would have said!
Follow Aditi on Twitter: @aditibhide