The world’s first bendable smart phone is almost upon us and it’s taken a direction we didn’t expect. The currently unnamed device being produced by the Chinese conglomerate Moxi Group is expected to be put into production this year, with the company stating they hope to have 100,000 units on shelves by the end of December.
If they can manage this it would certainly be a coup for the little guy, having the world’s only completely bendable smart phone be brought out by a company that isn’t Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Google, or any of the major smartphone players would certainly shake things up.
The Moxi Group’s offering isn’t coming to us in the standard smartphone format, however – at least not one that we’ve seen before. For one, the device presently doesn’t possess a colour display, instead it’ll ship with an E-Ink display, the same type of display loaded into a Kindle Paperwhite. This has a significant impact on the functionality of the device, it’s a guaranteed fact that the device isn’t going to be able to run some apps, especially ones focused around image and video. But there is no real word from the manufacturer as to what apps will be supported or will come natively.
The Moxi Group are claiming the phone is going to be able to wrap completely around the users wrist, and the prototype they’ve built appears to support this. The company claims they’re attempting and intending to get a colour version of their device out by 2018, but cite technical challenges.
It’s known that Samsung is working on bendable phone technology and have begun to phase it in with their edge range, having the screen curve round at the edges, LG have even begun bringing it in with their Flex range which curves the device around the users head. Even apple have recently received a patent for a “flexible electronic device”.
It would seem the flexible smartphone war is beginning to heat up, it only stands as to whether companies will decide whether it’s financially viable to go all in, or whether it’ll remain a side line.
Source: Moxi Group