It looks like Nokia and Cambridge University are one step closer, with a stretchable, electronic skin, to creating a flexible phone (first promoted as a Morph phone). According to the Nov.7, 2011 posting by Dawinderpal Sahota on telecoms.com,

Nokia has revealed it is using nanotechnology to create a new breed of smartphone that is flexible, stretchable and operated by physical manipulation.

The firm’s research and development arm – Nokia Research Center – has been working with scientists at The University of Cambridge to create products that it hopes will revolutionise the appearance and interface of handsets in the future.

The firm is working on two concepts – one that utilises flexible touchscreen technology, allowing phones to be controlled and navigated by squeezing and twisting the device, and another that allows the user to ‘wear’ the phone, effectively as another layer of their skin.

“Nano-enablers allow us to make products that are really revolutionary devices compared to what we see today. One thing that all designers have dreamed about is free-shape, free-form products that could be more organic and put components in a different places,” explained Tapani Jokinen, head of design technology insights at Nokia.

I last wrote about Nokia’s Morph phone/concept in my Aug. 3, 2011 posting where I noted that the company had made an announcement about graphene as enabling the development of a flexible phone. Sahota’s article goes on to note some of the advantages of what I suspect are graphene-based electronics,

He [Jokinen] added that in today’s smartphones, there are certain prominent features and dominant components; a touch screen has to be big, lithium batteries also need a lot of space and this is why all of the phones in the market have “sandwich structures”; a front cover, a back cover and layered components between those.

“What nanotechnology would bring is that we could have the energy sources in each component, for example, antennas could have their own energy sources, which would be nano-enabled supercapacitor batteries, which are small and flexible. …”

Nokia Research Centre Cambridge has developed a stretchable, electronic skin that you can see in this video,