Reflex bendable phone reacts when you bend it

Bendy screens have been touted as the next big thing for years, but this phone actually puts one to good use.

It’s called Reflex – not to be confused with the music producer of the same name – and when you bend it, it knows how hard you’re doing so and whatever’s on-screen reacts. So you can flip through the pages of an e-book just as you would with an actual book. Or bend it back and release to launch an Angry Bird at the green pigs.

It was designed by academics at Queen’s University in Canada. They used a 720p LG flexible OLED touch screen, Android KitKat and a haptic actuator to detect how much it’s bending and provide feedback to whoever’s bending it.

It’s the first time a phone actually responds to how you’re bending it, rather than bending just for the sake of it.

“This represents a completely new way of physical interaction with flexible smartphones,” said Roel Vertegaal, one of the academics behind the phone.

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“When this smartphone is bent down on the right, pages flip through the fingers from right to left, just like they would in a book. More extreme bends speed up the page flips. Users can feel the sensation of the page moving through their fingertips via a detailed vibration of the phone. This allows eyes-free navigation, making it easier for users to keep track of where they are in a document.”

However, the researchers reckon it’ll be a good couple of years until the technology is on sale to us punters. Looks like we’ll have to make do with the LG G Flex 2 bananaphone for now.