Outdated Smartphones and Tablets: New Technology Will Stop Them | I’ve never seen it, not even in science fiction movies

Consumerism, fashion and progress. Three words that bring joy to owning a high-performance smartphone, that become a pain for the environment.

For about eight billion people on Earth, they are About six and a half billion, almost sevenOr smartphone, Android or iOS makes no difference. positive side of consumerism There now with cell phones we work and have fun too. The downside is the duration of mobile phone use, on average two to three years at most, even if it obviously depends on how much we consume it.

there fashion It does so much, Apple has built an empire with concept so extreme and extreme that even the eye wants its part. Then Samsung made a breakthrough with foldable devices. Who knows who will arrive first in the race to roll, the new lead for many.

progress Is the other keyword, just think of this year 2023, of the ultimate explosion of AI development: All you have to do is mention ChatGPT to an OpenAI bot for it to go viral. Who knows what Google has in mind, called to respond to competitors. In this historical and cultural context, it is inevitable to pay attention to what smartphones are heading towards, and it seems that there is a new technology that wants to stop the traditional mobile phones, the ones that we now use and exploit more than a day.

Flat touch interfaces, with or without a screen, have invaded the modern world for quite some time now. Touch technology has safely migrated to laptops, not to mention it. However, haptic feedback is minimal, prompting a lot of research into shape-changing display and haptic technologies that are self-contained, fast-acting, and provide millimeters of change while only being a few millimeters thick.

The touch screen is evolving: the future becomes the present

So the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University belong to the group of future interfaces They decided to bring something new. This is explained by Craig Schultz, Chris Harrison and their research team. “Introducing a new type of miniature display that changes shape using integrated photovoltaic pumps.” Imagine those colorful gummy toys, which have been in fashion for years in Italy, similar to bubbles that push but don’t break. Poopits, that’s what they call it. This concept is not very different from the Carnegie Mellon team of researchers who belong to the Interfaces of the Future group.

“Our pumps,” Craig Shultz and Chris Harrison continued, “are directly controlled and operated by the applied voltage, It is 1.5mm thick and allows for complete stacks under 5mm thick. However, they can displace the entire volume of fluid in one second and generate pressures of ±50 kPa, which is sufficient to create dynamic millimeter-scale tactile features on a surface capable of withstanding typical reaction forces. “

From new technology to smartphones, the step is short. Speech by Craig Schultz and Chris Harrison. These are the technical components needed to enable, for example, Popup keyboard on a flat smartphone – they concluded – we empirically measure the mechanical and psychophysical performance of our monitors, and finish with a series of interface examples.