Nokia didn"t just show off the Windows Phone 7-based Lumia smartphones today at its Nokia World event in London. News.com reports that the company was also showing off a very wild smartphone display prototype that allowed the user to physically twist and flex the display in order to accomplish various tasks.
Nokia called the prototype display the "Nokia kinetic device" and as you can see in the video above the users is using his hand to flex the screen as if it was taffy. The device zoomed in and out of photos when a person bowed the display inward or outward, and in another demo, twisting the prototype caused the device to scroll through music and photo collections.
Nokia is apparently keeping quiet on exactly how this prototype works, only confirming that it is a real OLED display. There"s also no word on when a smartphone with this technology might be released by the company, nor whether or not Nokia might be working with Microsoft to develop the device.
One wonders what kind of applications could be used in tandem with such an interface. Certainly this kind of display could be used in mobile games, such as a racing game where the player twists the display in order to go left or right instead of simply pushing buttons or using the accelerometer.
It remains to be seen what all of that twisting and turning would do for the life of the phone itself. Smartphones are already pretty sensitive to hardware failures and creating one that"s made to be physically twisted could cause all sorts of hardware issues.