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Free your mobile mind! Nokia "morph" video released

In (perhaps) seven years' time, nanotech materials will allow Nokia to build a mobile that changes shape from laptop to wrist-watch format. The company is publicising its research project, and has released a video of the concept phone.

The video, available from YouTube, shows several aspects of the hoped-for tech breakthroughs which Nokia is now working on.

The sequence shows why it's called "morph" - not because of any similarity to Tony Hart's plasticine homonculus, but because it can change its shape.

Take the flat "open" format screen, fold it like a map (left) and it becomes a perfectly standard "candy-bar" phone.

Pull the earpiece off and use it as a Bluetooth headset, and wrap the phone around your wrist [right] and it becomes a watch-phone.

The work Nokia and Cambridge University (England) are collaborating on is a joint nanotechnology concept, developed by Nokia Research Center (NRC) and the University.

It was launched in New York a week ago, at the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition, which runs from February 24 to May 12, 2008, at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Morph features in both the exhibition catalog and on MoMA's official website. More information about the Nanoscience Centre is  also available at www.nanoscience.cam.ac.uk

It is an 1800 square metre research facility, was completed in January 2003 and is at the north east corner of the University's West Cambridge Site.

The Centre provides open access to over 300 researchers from a variety of University Departments to the nanofabrication and characterisation facilities housed in a combination of Clean Rooms and low noise laboratories. Office space is primarily home to the Department of Engineering's Nanoscience Group, technical and administrative staff and members of other research groups who require long term access to facilities.