Flexible display prototypes were presented during trade shows for some time now, but the actual final product failed to launch yet. This doesn’t mean this kind of technology won’t ever set foot on market and Nokia is one of the biggest names to support flexible displays. Recently the Finnish manufacturer patented a technology called “User Interface, Device And Method For A Physically Flexible Device“, a concept that uses the flexible properties of a gadget’s screen to search the web.

    It sound complicated, I know, but the idea is pretty simple: you flex the screen in shape of a bottle and it searches for a nearby bar/pub, make it a bowl and a restaurant list comes up and so on. Now if you ask me it’s a dumb idea, or at best one that has limited applications because there are a lot of things that you search more often than restaurants and limited ways you can bend a display. What if I want to search for a car, scissors or a simple gadget? Isn’t it better to write it down, or speak directly to the device? Plus not all people have the same skills and I doubt most will make a certain shape the same way. It’s like we are all asked to paint he Mona Lisa. I bet mine will resemble Aliens.

    Flexible search techology

    Flexible search techology

    But setting jokes aside flexible displays could mean interesting new uses for further tablets and other gadgets that can benefit from the new type of screen. Nokia believes flexible screens will become common starting 2015, but I think is a little too son and personally I’d double it to 2020.

    Source: Gorumors