A smartphone made from electronic paper has been demonstrated by researchers in Canada.

加拿大研究人员日前研发了一款使用电子纸制作的智能“纸手机”。

The PaperPhone lets people make calls by bending the epaper.
The PaperPhone is flexible and can be controlled by being bent¹, written on or used as a touchscreen.

The PaperPhone, built to determine how people use a flexible device, is a collaboration² between researchers from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada, Arizona State University, USA, researchers from the E-Ink Corporation.

"This is the future. Everything is going to look and feel like this within five years,” Roel Vertegaal, director of the human media lab at Queen’s, said. “This computer looks, feels and operates like a small sheet of interactive³（交互式的） paper.”

The epaper sheet, which uses the same e-Ink technology found in the Amazon Kindle⁴ ereader, is just millimetres thick and can be used to make phone calls, read ebooks and play music.

The researchers say that this technology could eventually mean the end of paper and printers. Dr Vertegaal said: “The paperless office is here. Everything can be stored digitally and you can place these computers on top of each other, just like a stack of paper.”

The PaperPhone will be displayed at the Association of Computing⁵ Machinery’s CHI 2011 conference in Vancouver, Canada, on May 10.