Gallery: Smart PaperPhone bends the rules

Think your cell phone is too heavy? Just wait until you can get your hands on a PaperPhone. Researchers at the Queen's University Human Media Lab in Ontario, Canada worked with the E Ink Corporation to develop a prototype (E Ink  helped develop the technology behind Amazon to develop Kindle.).

Probably the most interesting aspect of this phone is that you bend it to execute commands called bend gestures. 

For more on the PaperPhone read Chris Jablonski's ZDNet blog  and  David Meyer's blog from ZDNet UK. Queen's University Human Media Lab is also working on a snaplet watch shown later in the gallery.

Here's the research behind PaperPhone and a video showing how it works.

It's paper thin.

The back of PaperPhone, shows a printed circuit board featuring the bend sensors.

The PaperPhone will be presented on May 10 at the Association of Computing Machinery's Computer Human Interaction 2011 conference in Vancouver.

The Paperphone has a 3.7-inch screen. Bend the page to highlight an option on the main menu.

Problems encountered have included the fact that it can only be bent on one side and the slow refresh rate makes real-time animations impossible at this time.

Bending the corner lets you choose your contact.

Bending the phone icon forward in the middle makes a call.

You can play music on the PaperPhone.

With an ebook, bending back turns the page.

Here are some of the bend gestures you can use to operate your PaperPhone.

Also at the Association of Computing Machinery's Computer Human Interaction 2011 conference, Queen's University Human Media Lab will show off Snaplet, a device that's a a watch and media player when curved in a concave shape on the wrist.

When it's held flat, it's works like a PDA or notebook. But when held in a concave shape, it works like a phone.