Smartphones are pretty irresistible, right? They're our little carousels of dopamine we love to ride whenever there's a lull in life. Whether for business or pleasure, there's no debate. Diving into that world in the palm of your hand is a(n) addiction pleasure like no other.
What could be more irresistible? How about a smartphone with a transparent display, with two screens, front and back?
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That's exactly what NTT DOCOMO wants to give us. Co-developed with Fujitsu, they've doubled your pleasure by creating a prototype smartphone with front and back touch panels and a see-through display. This gives users the ability to operate applications on both sides of the display at the same time.
"You could hold down an icon on the front, and slide on the back to move an icon, or use the message bar, or create a new application," said Masashi Tagaya in DOCOMO YouTube video. Tagaya is of the company's Advanced Technology Group in the Communication Device Development Department.
"For example," he said, "from the front, you can only move the whole Rubik cube like this, but if you slide your finger across the front while holding down the back, you can rotate just one face. So this display makes gripping operations possible."
While this technology certainly could expand the capabilities of smartphones, there are still a few tweaks to be made. For example, the display is quite small, but thankfully the developers realize this.
"The display is QVGA (320 x 240), at 2.4 inches. We think it needs to be bigger if we're to market this kind of phone," said Tagaya. "But even in this form, we think it could be used as a sub-display. In that case, it will have a limited display capability, so we think the range of applications could be wider."
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Also on the improvement checklist is the display's brightness. Compared to today's smartphones with vibrant color-popping HD displays, DOCOMO's is cloudy and not very bright. But Tagaya and his crew say they're on top of that.
What this means for how we'll use smartphones of the future? I can only imagine features like this will suck us in even deeper. That is if smartphones haven't gone the way of the dinosaur. By then, we'll probably all be walking around in an augmented reality haze, compliments of our stylish, Terminator-like smartphone glasses.
credit: DOCOMO
