Polytron unveils transparent smartphone prototype

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Polytron Technologies, a Taiwanese global systems integration firm, has unveiled a prototype smartphone with an almost transparent body. The smartphone is likely to be available to users by end of this year.

The smartphone features nearly invisible electric wires while the rest of the device is transparent. However, some components of the device will be visible such as the camera parts, memory card and the battery – all placed on the rear of the casing. The prototype showed off wasn't fully functional, however the company is optimistic the device will be ready for retail market by 2013-end.

Polytron is the company that sells "Polyvision Privacy Glass”, a smartglass that can go from opaque cloudy white to nearly transparent by running an electric current. The company sells its glasses mostly to construction projects but now aims to deploy such technologies for future smartphones.

The company has also unveiled a nearly transparent USB memory stick, which is also expected to go on sale later this year.

Smartphones with transparent displays are likely to come up with notable advantages such as it could be much slimmer and lighter than the conventional smartphones with metal and plastic casings. While the transparent smartphones look like a distant reality, we have seen quite a few prototype flexible, plastic OLED displays since 2011.

At the recently held CES 2013 event, Samsung unveiled a new flexible display technology, called Youm, and showed off a prototype device that allowed user to bend the screen back and forth with ease.

Besides Samsung's Youm, Intel in coordination with Plastic Logic is also developing flexible concept designs such as real-time wristwatch and a flexible tablet called the PaperTab. The tablet has a 10.7-inch flexible screen as thin as sheet of paper and is believed to be replace the conventional laptop PCs within the next five years. Read more about the PaperTab here.

Source: TechRadar

