Skip to main content

Nokia Kinetic "Bendy" phone prototype - NanoTechnology getting closer to market

At Nokia World last week Nokia showed and wrote about a hands-on prototype of their new Nokia Kinetic "bendy" phone, a phone that users control by bending it. It's incredible that they talked so much about controling the phone by bending it that it's easy to overlook how amazing it is that a phone could simply bend without breaking!

Nokia didn't talk much about the technology underlying the Kinetic, but one Nokia article made it clear that the Kinetic is an outgrowth of Nokia's Morph vision and NanoTechnology research.  Nokia has researched heavily the use of porous graphene, silicon rubber and evaporated gold for flexible devices, ZNO nanowires, Silicon Carbide nanoflowers,, and more.

Grizzly Analytics has an 83-page report available that gives details of Nokia's NanoTechnology research, including research in bendable electronics, interfacing with a device by bending or reshaping it, sensing device bending and deforming, flexible touchscreens, flexible batteries, thin and flexible speakers, sensors for sensing the environment, and much more.

Nokia now says that the Kinetic is "as little as three years" from market.  In our report we predicted that bendable devices were five years away from market.  Either way, if Nokia can be first to market with a truly flexible phone, they may get back some of the innovator momentum that they've lost in recent years.

Nokia's nanotechnology research is also about more than bendable phones.  They's working on thin and flexible solar energy panels and energy harvesting, device materials that repel water, sensors, nano-thin speakers, and much more.

If you're competing with Nokia and need to get into the race to flexible devices, or if you have related technology and want to get a full picture of Nokia's research, our 83 page report on Nokia's NanoTechnology Research is a must-read. Find out more and order your copy by clicking here, or e-mail us at info@grizzlyanalytics.com

In case you haven't seen it, here's Nokia's new demonstration of the Kinetic "bendy" phone:





Addendum:   Nokia also released a new vision of bendable phones based on their nanotechnology research.  This appears to be an update to their more far-out Morph vision from a few years ago.  The new vision is dubbed "HumanForm."  Here's the video of their new vision:

Popular posts from this blog

Finding indoor location tech, and fans, at MWC 2017

Over 100,000 people are now planning to attend the 2017 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, in February. Many will flock to the newest devices, many to the keynote speeches from market leaders, and many to the latest tech from a huge variety of exhibitors. But how does anyone find all the tech they want to see? Anyone who has been to MWC in the past will tell you that there is no way to be sure you're seeing all that you want to see. Anyone interested in indoor location technology now has a solution. The Grizzly Analytics Guide to Indoor Location Technology at MWC2017 will list all the companies at MWC that are demonstrating, presenting or talking about indoor location tech. (Obviously we may miss one, but since we've reported on indoor location tech from over 200 companies , we expect to be fairly comprehensive.) The guide will be organized by technology type and also by MWC hall number, so you can plan your time accordingly. If you are exhibiting i...

The year indoor location will truly take off

For years I've been writing sentences like "this will be the year that indoor location will explode into the market." I, and many others, have been expecting indoor location technology to enable the huge range of location-enabled apps, which currently work only outside where GPS signals are available, to work inside. But until now the promise of indoor location has remained a promise. But if we look at the reasons for this, we'll see that it is about to change. 2017 and 2018 are poised to be the years that the challenges keeping indoor location from going mainstream will be solved. First is accuracy. Most indoor location technologies until a year or so ago had accuracy in the range of 4 to 8 meters. This sounds good in principle, and in fact is better than GPS in many cases. But GPS systems are able to use road details to hide their inaccuracies, so that the blue dot seems to follow your driving car almost perfectly. But indoors, this sort of inaccuracy means y...

Indoor Location, GeoFencing and Retail (Updated w/ video)

We've written a lot about indoor location technology , which is bringing location services indoors where GPS doesn't work. And we've written more recently about GeoFencing , a new location technology that enables smartphones to display content or take other actions when entering a specified area. And a few weeks ago we wrote about a company that was bringing the two together . Now Aisle411 has entered the ring, adding GeoFencing to their indoor solution . And they're bringing GeoFencing to life in the retail store industry . Aisle411's solution lets you navigate your way around a store to find specific products on the shelves. You can even enter your whole shopping list, or the items you need for a recipe, and the app will guide you around the store to buy everything you need quickly.   And here's where the GeoFencing comes in:  As you near certain products, you'll get offers for related products on your smartphone screen. They might be as s...