加拿大研發“紙手機” 有望引領新潮流

A smartphone made from electronic paper has been demonstrated by researchers in Canada。

The PaperPhone is flexible and can be controlled by being bent, written on or used as a touchscreen。

The PaperPhone, built to determine how people use a flexible device, is a collaboration between researchers from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, Arizona State University, USA, researchers from the E-Ink Corporation。

“This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,” Roel Vertegaal, director of the human media lab at Queen’s, said. “This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive paper。”

The epaper sheet, which uses the same e-Ink technology found in the Amazon Kindle ereader, is just millimetres thick and can be used to make phone calls, read ebooks and play music。

The researchers say that this technology could eventually mean the end of paper and printers. Dr Vertegaal said: “The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other, just like a stack of paper。”

The PaperPhone will be displayed at the Association of Computing Machinery’s CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver, Canada, on May 10.加拿大研究人員日前研發了一款使用電子紙製作的智能“紙手機”。

這款“紙手機”非常輕薄，而且還可以通過彎曲、書寫、或當作觸摸屏使用進行相應操作。

該手機是由位於加拿大金斯敦的女王大學、美國亞利桑那州立大學、以及“電子墨水”公司三家機構的研究人員共同研製的，用以明確人們如何使用輕薄可彎曲的電子產品。

女王大學人類媒體實驗室主任羅爾•維特加爾說：“‘紙手機’將引領未來的手機潮流。五年內，同類產品都將有相似外觀和觸感。它的外觀、觸感和使用方式都像一張很小的互動卡片。”

這款紙手機僅有幾毫米厚，使用的電子墨水技術和亞馬遜Kindle電子書相同，可以打電話、閱讀電子書、聽音樂。

研究人員稱，這種技術將終結紙和印刷時代。維特加爾博士說：“無紙化辦公就可以這樣實現。所有信息都可以實現電子存儲，你還可以把這些小計算機摞在一起，就像一疊紙。”

研究人員將於5月10日在加拿大溫哥華舉辦的電子計算機協會2011人機交互會議上正式推介這款手機。