Bendy Nokia HumanForm future phone warps reality

Nokia has unveiled a fascinating glimpse of the future of mobile phones with its HumanForm concept phone.

There’s no working prototype and Nokia only showed a dummy mock-up at its Nokia World event in October, but the fact that the Nokia Research Centre is busying itself with this kind of thing is pretty neat.

We previously reported another of Nokia’s prototype ‘bendy’ phones, the Nokia Kinetic, which allowed users to control certain features through pinching, flexing or bending certain parts of the device.

With the HumanForm, Nokia has taken that idea further and combined it with some current touchscreen control methods to get a blend of the best of both.

However, a larger part of the idea behind the HumanForm, is to take the phone outside of the traditional ‘screen in a case’ format and make the whole phone surface a functional item.

The whole phone is a transparent lozenge shape, it’s transparent because it is entirely a touchscreen display – images, interfaces and video play out along the length and breadth of the whole device.

Controls are handled by motion-based gestures as well as conventional touchscreen taps and swipes, along with the bend and pinch controls allowed by its highly flexible body.

What’s more, the gel construction means the phone can mould and adapt to the shape of your face and ear.

Of course, this sort of thing is quite far-future stuff even if Nokia is actively working on it.

We love the idea behind it, moving outside of the touchscreen is great, but we do find it a little odd-looking and it surely won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Similar technology with a less alien appearance would be a great compromise.

Here’s a fairly inspirational video presentation: