A certain Finnish giant seemed to be raring to offer flexibility in the literal sense as it showed off the new Nokia Kinetic bendy phone concept at the Nokia World 2011 in London. While the Lumia and Asha were in the limelight at the event, this futuristic device certainly grabbed its own share of attention.
The concept still has some a few more years to put behind it before making its market entry. But this only means that there are eyes set and a lot of hopes pinned on it and the sort of capabilities which can be offered by the technology. It’s basically a blend of a very intuitive user interface packed into some decently flexible hardware.
“This goes beyond touchscreen, but there’s no intention to replace it. This is multi-modal. There are cases where touchscreen is superior, but there are also cases where touchscreen doesn’t work, like when you are wearing gloves for example, in the cold winters of Finland. We can even build in security functions so that the phone will only work when it recognizes your grip,” expressed Tapani Jokinen, Head of Design at Nokia.
The phone looks like it is sculpted to carry out all the function sans buttons, even the usual ones. The operations for this handset are executed by twisting, bending, and even squeezing it. Users can twist forward to scroll down through files, contacts, and so on. Twisting the Nokia Kinetic even more is the trigger for the process to move along faster.
Likewise, twisting the handset backwards will just take users back to the desired file. To open an item or to access a file, a simple bending action is enough. Answering the phone also functions in a similar manner. A simple squeeze will be enough to pick up a call, according to the design around which the phone is built.
The Nokia Kinetic is still in the stages of development, though the company does think it’ll be commercially viable in three years.