Exciting times in the world of electronics as phone company Nokia have designed a wearable, flexible phone. Resembling a normal handset folded in half, when fully unrolled it can be used as a keyboard but it can also be folded lengthways and widthways and curled into a bracelet to wear on the wrist.
Although current battery technology isn’t good enough to join this flexible technology revolution as improvements in nanowire batteries and even static electricity generating clothing could mean that in ten year’s time we wear our phone/mp3 player/personal computer on our sleeve and link up our headphones to it wirelessly.
Since 2002, the Wireless World Initiative (WWI) has been working on a number of user-centric wireless systems that integrate what is currently an extremely disjointed mess of networks and protocols. The five systems – SPICE, MobiLife, WINNER, E2R and Ambient Networks aim to provide a seamless wireless system that connects up all of a user’s gadgets and software in an integrated configuration that doesn’t impact on the usability for the user.
Science Daily has a good article on what ‘Bob the builder’ and ‘Bob the businessman’ might use this new technology for.
Now this is just a great idea, plain and simple – clothing made from fabrics with piezo-electric materials embedded in them, which will generate electric current as a result of the flexing produced by the wearer’s motion. The project has been sponsored to the tune of AUS$4.4million by the Australian Defence Department, and the potential for military applications is obvious enough, but the same technology would be very lucrative in the commercial sector too. Of course, it’s not in the bag yet – the researchers behind the idea suggest a viable product may be ready in four or five years – but the day when I can travel without having to pack an arsenal of batteries and wall-warts can’t come soon enough. [Via SmartMobs] [Image by Mgus]
Exciting times in the world of electronics as phone company Nokia have designed a wearable, flexible phone. Resembling a normal handset folded in half, when fully unrolled it can be used as a keyboard but it can also be folded lengthways and widthways and curled into a bracelet to wear on the wrist.