Everyone remembers the huge backlash that Apple received back in September of 2014 with the release of their iPhone 6 Plus because of it’s ability to bend quite easily. With the amount of backlash that they got, surely no one in their right mind would purposely create a bendable phone right?
Well, according to a recently published article in Science Daily, engineers from The Austrian National University (ANU) have created a semiconductor material that can be used to make mobile phones bendable because of its thin and flexible properties. It is made up of both organic and inorganic materials; not to be confused with the ‘organic’ in ‘organic foods’, but meaning that it is carbon-based (and non-carbon based for inorganic).
The Inside of a Semiconductor Phone. (Image from Technology24)
And there’s more. This material is biodegradable and is easily recyclable, which would drastically reduce the amount of electronic waste created from electronic devices.
From 2014 – 2016 , only 3-4% of all E-waste around the world was recycled each year. Graph by Keanson Phanvan, data from The Global E-waste Monitor – 2017, United Nations University (UNU)
Surely this must provide some sort of trade-off: sacrificing computing power for environmentally friendly material in the phone. But it doesn’t. According to Dr. Sharma of the ANU Research School of Engineering,
“We have the potential with this semiconductor to make mobile phones as powerful as today’s supercomputers.”
We live in a world where we could potentially have a phone that is capable of bending whilst at the same time is able to run as fast as a computer. It is innovative, but do we really want our mobile phones to bend?
Personally, I would rather have my screens kept flat. I don’t see the advantages a bendable phone provides when it comes to texting, calling, scrolling, and watching movies, etc. I wouldn’t mind if you were able to bend it back into a completely flat shape, but if its like any kind of metal, that is not possible. As a perfectionist, even just a little curve in my phone would be enough to bother me tremendously.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making alternatives to help our environment by reducing electronic waste, but I’m sure in the future there are going to be other alternatives that do exactly that without causing my mobile phone to bend. It doesn’t matter if the phone would hypothetically cost $1, the price of a bending phone is too much to pay.
