You Can Bend AUO's Flexible Phone To Navigate Apps

While we're now well into the era of curved screen smartphones, thanks to hits like Samsung's Galaxy Edge devices, Taiwanese manufacturer AUO has raised the bar with its new flexible phone concept. Unveiled at Touch Taiwan 2015 this week, the screen isn't just bendable for the sake of showing how strong it is, it's actually used as a form of input. Corners or sides of the phone can be bent with up to six degrees getting recognized as inputs similar to a stylus or pinch-to-zoom gestures.

Shown as a prototype in the animation below, the phone uses the Google Earth app to demonstrate how bending it could be used as logical inputs. Flexing the device's corners causes the Earth to rotate, while bending the top edge forwards or backwards controls zooming in and out.

Speaking to Engadget China, AUO said the 5-inch display, with a 1,280 x 720 AMOLED screen, is unbreakable. While that may be true or not, it certainly shows some of the highest levels of flexibility we've seen since displays started becoming bendable.

The company says they could adapt the technology to work on phones with higher resolutions, or even bigger devices like tablets. One possible use for bending input on a tablet could be when a user wants to turn the page on an e-book, they can simply twist one side of the device.

SOURCE & Media: Engadget China