Behold the Flexible Mobile Device of the Future From Nokia

Instead of the pinch-to-zoom capabilities copied throughout the smartphone industry, Nokia has come up with a novel way to accomplish the same thing: When you bend and twist this handset, the image on its screen does your bidding in a highly intuitive way.

Nokia 888

Nokia has done with this mobile gadget — Nokia calls it a “kinetic device,” a prototype with a flexible display the company showed at Nokia World 2011 in London. One of the advantages Nokia touts for such a device is the ability to use it without looking at it — for instance, twisting it in your pocket to dismiss a call or change song on a music player.

The flexible concept phone is really a 5-inch tablet running demos of two apps, a photo viewer and a music player. The flexible phone demo is pretty basic right now; it's more about materials science than about any actual future shipping product. I've seen similar ideas from both Synaptics and Kyocera in the past. The idea is to make a phone into an even more natural, physical object.

According to CNET, a Nokia demonstrator said the company was experimenting with bundles of carbon nanotubes whose electrical properties change when they’re stretched. Those nanotubes are embedded in a flexible substance that allows the device to control the screen when twisted and bent. An additional advantage: The device is much tougher — and is water resistant, too.

The mobile giant also, unveiled a portfolio of its new phones, services and accessories at the annual Nokia World event for customers, partners and developers in the UK. Among the rest there were such highlights as innovative Windows-based Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 smartphones.

The question is: will this widget ever come to Africa?