Folding technology is long-promised but slow to arrive. But his kind of tri-fold hardware might just be the how the sci-fi dream pans out over the next few years.
This prototype is put together by the Human Media Lab at Canada’s Queen’s University. It’s a fully functional smartphone that uses three separate e-ink screens which snap together.
It’s pretty neat, and it seems particularly great for navigation (hey, it feels a bit like a paper map to begin with, so that may be no surprise). In the example, the team behind it show it being used for displaying driving directions over all of the screens, or folding the displays together to create a kind of Google Earth globe.
Not perhaps the most practical of designs, but it’s an interesting glimpse into what could be the near-future of foldable tech. [Media Labs via Engadget]