Dick Tracy Would Like Nokia's Morph Cell Phone (NewsFactor)

At a trade show, you stretch your wristwatch cell phone to check the time and then hand out business-card phones with your logo. This vision of the not-too-distant future is one of the possibilities of the Morph joint venture by Nokia and the United Kingdoms University of Cambridge.

That vision went on display at New Yorks Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Sunday, as part of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit. "Morph," Nokia said, "is a concept that demonstrates how future mobile devices might be stretchable and flexible, allowing the user to transform their mobile device into radically different shapes."

TRANSPARENT ELECTRONICS

Dr. Bob Iannucci, Nokia chief technology officer, said the Nokia Research Center is looking to "reinvent the form and function of mobile devices" through the use of nanotechnology and the Morph "concept phones" show some of the possibilities -- including flexible materials, transparent electronics and self-cleaning surfaces.

The partnership between Nokia and the university, announced last March, involves a research facility at the university and collaboration with several academic departments, including the Nanoscience Center and the Engineering Department. Nokia said the projected timeline for integration into handheld devices is within seven years, initially through high-end devices, and applications could include lowering the cost of manufacturing.

Chris Hazelton, an analyst with industry research firm IDC, noted that the collaboration supports a general trend toward the development of morphing or changeable phones. Morphing, he said, is the industrys growing effort to address the need "for greater capability for mobile phones, while getting around the size barrier."

FORM FOLLOWING FUNCTION

He noted that the morphing trend includes designs in which form literally follows function, such as the keypad in Motorolas Rokr E8, in which a 12-key alphanumeric pad for phone use can become a media playback pad with play, stop and other functions.

He added that Polymer Vision, a spin-off from Dutch giant Phillips, has announced an average-sized phone with a foldable screen that offers a display larger than the device itself.

And an Israeli company, Modu, recently announced component cell phones -- what it called the "first modular mobile phone." The ecosystem, as the company calls its approach, is sold in parts and assembled as needed. Its heart is a tiny phone reduced to its core functions and smallest size -- smaller than a credit card -- and it can be snapped together with various phone enclosures or compatible electronics devices.

Like enterprise software or home music units, mobile devices are becoming adaptable and component-ized, although Hazelton cautioned that the Nokia/Cambridge effort is attempting to do this at the component and microscopic level, and will likely take several years.