Have you ever looked at your iPhone and thought: “Gosh, I wish this thing would bend”?
Answering the legions of gadgeteers desperate for a bendy smartphone, China-based Moxi Group has announced a new flexible handset. The phones are so bendy that they can even be rolled into a bracelet and worn around the wrist, without impacting the functionality of the touchscreen display. Seeya later, Apple Watch.
Moxi, which is based in Chongqing, says it plans to ship an impressive 100,000 of the circular smartphones in 2016. Each unit will be priced at 5,000 yuan – that’s around £519 or $761.
The main catch is that the phones will feature only black-and-white displays, initially anyway. There are plans to introduce a colour version later – how very modern. Speaking to Bloomberg, Chongsheng Yu, Moxi’s executive vice president, explains:
“Black-and-white phones are much easier to make. The colour model power usage is also much higher than that of the black-and-white unit. We’ll see in China and if there’s demand overseas, we’ll look into it.”
So how does Moxi’s bendy blower work? Well the screens are actually just E ink displays, based on graphene for added resilience. Moxi also avoided putting anything behind the screen, instead lumping all of the components (battery, CPU and so on) into one end of the device.
The real question is: Why would anyone want one?
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What do you think of Moxi’s bendy phone? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.