You’d be hard pressed to find a pocket in this country that wasn’t filled snugly with a smartphone. In the past half-decade or so, these devices have become beyond ubiquitous. You can call them proto-wearable technology, if you will. Still, the onward march of progress must continue. Your iPhone can text, send pictures and play a mean game of Temple Run, but can it change shape on command? That’s just what a team of researchers is working on having the smartphone of the near future do. Imagine the possibilities!
Researchers from the University of Bristol have come up with a working concept design for this outlandish idea, which they are calling shape resolution. It starts with flexible prototypes, which are then given their extraordinary fungibility by virtue of advanced shape-changing materials, such as memory alloy and electro active polymer. This depends on smartphones becoming remarkably thinner in the coming years, of course, which is almost an absolute certainty. What in tarnations would this let you do? Well, imagine downloading an app and your phone adjusts shape to accommodate it. Stress balls, video game controllers and anything else you could imagine could be sitting there in your pocket.
These future gadgets, which the researchers have nicknamed Morphees, are still a whiles away from store shelves. However, it’s always good to know that the future is bright and not a desolate wasteland like in the Mad Max movies. Wait, what? In any event, check out this video below.
