Shapeshifting smartphone that turns into armband, tablet being developed

Researchers are developing a mobile device that can assume the shape of an armband, a phone and a tablet.

Researchers at Hasselt University iMinds in Belgium are developing a smartphone called "Paddle," which is designed around engineering principles derived from the popular 3-D Rubik's Magic Puzzle.

It's a folding plate puzzle consisting of a loop of eight square shaped tiles that can be transformed in a variety of surprising ways. Studying the puzzle over a period of seven months enabled the Hasselt researchers to create a phone that could be quickly transformed into various shapes in a few simple steps.

"At the moment our Paddle prototype supports around 15 different shapes but this number increases every day as we are including more and more shapes of the original Rubik's Magic puzzle," Raf Ramakers, a PhD Student in Human Computer Interaction at the University, said.

"When unfolding Paddle completely it is nearly the size of an iPad, but when folding it up, it can become smaller than an iPhone," he said.

For instance, you might transform it into a book, whose pages you can leaf through to read. Need to scroll through a list? Not a problem. Simply turn your phone into a bracelet and roll through individual links to scroll through various list items. Want to go for a jog? Turn it into an armband. Instead of carrying around an arsenal of devices, you'd just need one.

Paddle can be nearly the size of an iPad or smaller than an iPhone.