Morphing Cellphones

CAMBRIDGE, England - Nokia's dream phone of the future may at the moment be nothing more than a few plastic mock-ups and a lot of imagination, but it clearly has a powerful sway over the researchers who conceived it.

Models of the so-called "Morph" phone are kept in a foam-padded case, along with a single white glove, deep in the heart of Nokia's (nyse: NOK - news - people ) research laboratory in Cambridge University, England. They look like green, translucent alien artifacts, with bizarre symbols etched onto them. But they are actually meant to represent a totally flexible mobile phone. Not just a regular handset, but one that could fold out into an electronic map or fit around the wrist like a watch, losing none of its functionality along the way.

The head of Nokia's research laboratory in Cambridge, Tapani Ryhanen, is keen to point out that Morph is a highly theoretical idea of what consumers might be expecting in a decade's time. But given that his team is researching the nanotechnology that could make such a device possible, he clearly sees the Morph as more than just a fantasy. He handles each mock-up with extreme care, and panics after accidentally dropping one of the models to the floor.

"These are very expensive," he says, inspecting the bruised but unharmed model with a worried expression.

Nokia unveiled the Morph in February at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of an exhibition called "Design And The Elastic Mind." It is just a taste of what Nokia hopes will be the fruits of its research center, which was opened in collaboration with Cambridge University in March 2007. And although such a phone is at least a decade away from actually becoming reality, those working on the project believe it is far more than just a pipe dream.

"None of it is science fiction," declares Mark Welland, a professor and director of the Cambridge University side of the collaboration. "If there was strong commercial interest in having a flexible phone, we already have flexible electronics in the lab. … It is very strongly grounded in real technology."

Nokia researchers believe that advances in nanotechnology will give them the ingredients to make future mobile phones far thinner, more stretchable, more durable and more energy-efficient than contemporary devices. The manpower Nokia has dedicated to nanoscience research is currently small--some 30 or 40 researchers worldwide out of a total force of 13,000. But the team is already making some advances that could wind up in handsets only a year or two from now.

Don't expect a full-fledged version of Morph, which combines flexible electronics, touch-sensitive textured displays and the ability to process sensory information all in one phone. But, deep within the guts of the handset, nanotechnology may bring about some big improvements.

Take the humble lithium cell phone battery, for instance. Battery efficiency, lifespan and even safety could be vastly improved, the researchers believe, by increasing the surface area of the active materials that make up the battery electrodes. Faster charge times, longer battery life and less chance of a meltdown would, in turn, lead to thinner handsets. Such improved batteries may only be a year or two away, Nokia researchers say.

Batteries are one of five major projects under way at Nokia's Cambridge University research center. Tucked away in a quiet, grassy compound on J J Thomson Avenue--appropriately named after the Nobel laureate who discovered the electron--the center takes advantage of resources and additional researchers from the university.

Although Nokia's Cambridge team works on projects with five- to seven-year time horizons, it must still prove its viability to Nokia. Every year the Finnish company reviews its research projects, and those that are going nowhere could end up getting cut.

"There is always a gap between development and deployment," says Alan Brown, an analyst with Gartner Research, noting that Bluetooth technology took four or five years to take off after it was finalized. "I think nanotechnology will get a significant market by 2011."

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