FortySouth

Nokia, the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, announced earlier this year a new kind of phone that’s bendable, the Morph concept.

This concept phone was developed in conjunction with the University of Cambridge to show how nanotechnology might be used to make mobile devices stretchable, flexible, transparent, and easier to keep clean.

Nanotechnology. What is nanotechnology? A basic definition is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale (a few nanometers wide), building products truly starting from the bottom up. It’s a manufacturing technology that is expected to make products lighter, stronger, cleaner, less expensive and more precise.

The device was recently showcased at the ‘Design and the Elastic Mind’ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. In combining art and science, Nokia hopes that it will showcase the potential of nanoscience to a much wider audience.

How far ahead into the future are we looking at for deployment into the consumer market? About 7 years. Although Morph technology likely will be incorporated first in high-end handsets, it eventually will find its way into low-cost mobile phones, Nokia says.

And boy, will we be waiting.

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