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Monday, February 22, 2016

This bendy smartphone could spell the end for broken screens


ReFlex bendable phone
The ReFlex bendable phone could offer new opportunities for games and app 
Searchers in Canada claim to have created the world's first fully flexible smartphone with a high resolution, full-colour display and wireless capability. 
The flexible phone, called ReFlex, is capable of bending and flexing in what the creators claim will make apps and games more fun to use. 
The researchers demonstrated how it could be used imitate leafing through the pages of a book. 
"When this smartphone is bent down on the right, pages flip through the fingers from right to left, just like they would in a book. More extreme bends speed up the page flips," said Dr Roel Vertegaal, director at the Human Media Lab.
Created by the Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Canada, the phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat and sports an 720p LG Display organic light-emitting diode (OLED) touch screen. On the back of the phone bend sensors alert apps to when the phone's shape shifts. 
The ReFlex also has a "voice coil" that simulates the forces and friction through vibrations in the body. 

Angry Bird on the ReFlex
A game of Angry Birds on the ReFlex
"This allows for the most accurate physical simulation of interacting with virtual data possible on a smartphone today," said Dr Vertegaal.  
Dr Vertegaal believes bendable smartphones, which could spell the end of broken screens, will be on the market within five years. 
The ReFlex isn't the first flexible smartphone that has been designed - Samsung showed off a  bendy phone at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas back in 2013. The South Korean electronic firm's design also had an OLED screen, but did not make it to market in the UK.  Last year LG unveiled its curved G Flex2, which is capable of limited flexibility, and Apple is believed to be investing in the technology after filing several patents around flexible displays.

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