Grip UI: Will Squeezy Smartphones Launch New Era of CE Devices?

  • Japanese phone maker NTT Docomo is hoping consumers will be interested in its Grip UI technology, which offers functionality through squeezing and pinching phones.
  • “Consumers have gotten used to pinching and swiping,” reports Fortune. “Soon phone makers may be adding bending, folding and squeezing to their repertoire.”
  • The primary goal of Grip UI is to create a mobile phone that is easier to control with one hand, freeing up the user’s other hand for carrying a briefcase, for example, or holding on to a pole in the subway.
  • NTT Docomo’s Android-powered handset has 270 sensors in the phone’s body that enables users to execute operations by squeezing the bezel.
  • “It is the latest in a range of emerging technology haptic gadgets — and even bendable phones — that promise commercialization soon and that exploit our innate love of manipulating tactile, responsive objects,” explains the article.
  • “Pressure sensitivity is a very interesting direction for phones so this is great technology,” says Ivan Poupyrev, haptics researcher at Disney’s labs in Pittsburgh.
  • Flexible objects and haptic interfaces could eventually lead to innovative products such as thin bendable media cards, interactive maps, mini photo albums, advanced OLED screens and various malleable electronic devices.

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