In a few years, cellphones and tablet computers will fold in your pocket like paper, a Canadian media developer says.
Roel Vertegaal, director of Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, is presenting his prototype, the PaperPhone, at the Association of Computing Machinery's Computer Human Interaction conference in Vancouver next week.
"This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years," he said Wednesday. "This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cellphone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen."
The PaperPhone's display is a thin, flexible display that measures 3.7 inches diagonally. When documents can be stored on larger versions, offices will no longer need paper or printers, Vertegaal says.
"The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other just like a stack of paper, or throw them around the desk," he said.
A study on the interactive use of bending flexible thin film computers is to be published at the conference, and Vertegaal's team also will demonstrate a wristband computer called the Snaplet.
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