A team at Queen’s University in Canada now have the first full-color, high-res bendable mobile phone.
The Human Media Lab from Queen’s University in Canada has now unveiled a prototype flexible 3D smartphone that they have named the ReFlex and that has become the first mobile device in the world to be high resolution, full-color and able to display three dimensional images.
At the same time, the team behind the ReFlex also announced its HoloFlex smartphone.
The HoloFlex goes beyond the already impressive ReFlex 3D smartphone by becoming the “world’s first flexible lightfield-enabled smartphone.” Said more basically, this mobile phone is not only flexible but is also able to display holograms, such as being able to “project princess Leia into the palm of your hand,” said the announcement.
These two 3D smartphone technology devices are still in rough prototype form but are quite unique.
The HoloFlex operates on Android 5.1. This bendable mobile device is powered by a 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor. It has 2GB of memory and has an Adreno 430 GPU supporting OpenGL 3.1.
The bendable screen on the HoloFlex is 1920×1080 and this touchscreen is a full ND Flexible Organic Light Emitting Diode (FOLED) display. Because of this, it is capable of rendering 3D images. To demonstrate the capabilities in a rather lighthearted style, the researchers used the HoloFlex to play Angry Birds in an entirely new way.
According to Dr. Roel Vertegaal, Human Media Laboratory director, “HoloFlex offers a completely new way of interacting with your smartphone. It allows for glasses-free interactions with 3D video and images in a way that does not encumber the user.” Dr. Vertegaal also pointed out that through the use of a depth camera, it also becomes possible for the users of the device to be able to conduct conferences with each other in holographic video. Bending the display allows the image to appear to rise out of the screen. The image is rendered correctly to the viewer from any angle, including the details of a person’s face.
Both the HoloFlex holographic mobile phone and the ReFlex 3D smartphone remain in their prototype versions at the moment and at the time of the writing of this article, there had not yet been any specific mention as to the way in which these devices may move forward from a commercial standpoint.
