After E-Readers, Paper Phones are Next?

E-ink has been a great technology for e-reader manufacturers to offer a more realistic reading experience to their customers. It has other applications though. We have already seen e-ink technology used in watches. The PaperPhone takes this concept a step further. It is the first flexible smart-phone with a 3.75-inch thin-film display that can do anything your smart-phone can do.

The prototype displayed in the above video does not look thicker than a driver’s license. The fact that our phones could be this thin in the near future is quite exciting. As Queen’s University’s Roel Vertegaal explains, this could be what we get in the near future:

This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper. You interact with it by bending it into a cell phone, flipping the corner to turn pages, or writing on it with a pen,

You can squeeze this phone to make a call or bend it to turn a page. The larger versions of this can be quite useful for businesses. As more people get used to reading e-books rather than paper books, it is not a stretch to see people using e-ink devices to handle their business on a daily basis.

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

This prototype is not unbreakable but from what we have heard, it is super flexible. Who knows. Maybe our iPhones will be as thin in 5 years.