Mobile Phone Blog:

News has come through to us from Reuters, of yet another new type of visual interface (or, to put it simply, screen). We’ve heard about projectors, we’ve heard about spectacles, we’ve heard about contact lenses… and now, there’s e-paper.

To be fair, I’ve already heard of, and used, e-paper. The Motorola F3 uses it. You know the one, that uber-cheap, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin phone, that’s designed purely to do calls and texts, and nothing else (and which costs next to nothing!)

However, this new device, the ‘Readius’ by Polymer Visions, takes it a whole lot further, by making the screen 5 INCHES across, adding in 3G internet access, and normal phone calls, AND making it so the screen can bend and fold away when you’re not using it.

Doubtless you’re now wondering how a screen can bend without breaking, now. Well, basically, it’s NOT a screen, in the traditional sense. It’s what’s called e-paper. So, imagine it quite literally as paper with printing on. But, the individual e-ink molecules can show either black or white, and it takes a tiny electric pulse to flip them between states, giving you what amounts to a paper screen that can change what’s printed on it in the blink of an eye. And, crucially, which is still effectively like paper, so you can bend it any old how!

Even more crucially is that unlike normal screens, e-paper screens only use power when they’re changing state, so if you leave it idle, and the screen’s not changing, it uses precisely NO power. Which means your battery will last for roughly, ooh, ever.

Now, granted, it’s only black and white at the minute, but with developments coming thick and fast, it can’t be that long till they work out a colour version. Once they do, though… well, mobile phones could get a whole lot bendier.