Microsoft Research: FlexCase, case for smartphone with flexible display

Woe to call it simply "custody" for smartphones, FlexCase is much more: first, the result of a research project developed by Microsoft Research in collaboration with the University of Applied Sciences of Upper Austria, in the second place a good way to demonstrate how an object of common use, or the smartphone's case, can play a role that goes beyond the ability to protect the smartphone.

FlexCase raises cause for concern because it becomes in fact the case in an extension of the smartphone, setting, depending on the mode of use, as an input device or as a secondary terminal display. From a technical standpoint, it is a flip cover to the book with a flexible 4 "display e-ink integrated on the outside cover and inside the cover is also a multifaceted network of piezoelectric sensors to record declines applied by the user in transforming inputs sent to your smartphone.

In the demonstration movie is documented three modes of use: Book Mode, which extends the smartphone's display and supports input via bending, Laptop Mode, which uses the e-ink display by providing an input tool that simulates a real keyboard, and Backside Mode with the cover folded to 180 degrees with respect to the smartphone display, but still able to support the interaction through flexion. The potential of FlexCover are numerous, as easy to understand by the demonstration movie, released in late March, but only recently spotted on the net.

Interestingly, for example, the ability to browse the contents of an e-book or manipulate a map, simply bending one of the corners of the cover. The ability to leverage the e-ink display as a secondary display also allows you to speed up the execution of tasks such as copying and pasting text, placing thanks to the selection window, which offers a preview of the contents stored in the clipboard and ability to very quickly place them in the document. To increase the productivity tools integrated in the tablet and smartphone software supplied, are increasingly being supported ways of using split-screen; Flexible protagonist custody of the research project, to achieve similar goals in part, takes advantage of the cover surface, unused in tradizinali enclosures.

Difficult to determine whether FlexCase will result in an actual product for the consumer market. David Kim and Sean Linnet, two researchers of the group Interactive 3D Technologies of Microsoft Research site located in Redmond, and Shaharm Izadi Microsoft Resaerch Cambridge division collaborated with scholars Austrian University for giving substance to the project, but it is said that Redmond is actually interested in turning it into a consumer product. The FlexCase will be present at CHI 2016, the conference on the theme Human-Computer Interaction to be held in San Jose (CA, USA) May 7 to 12.