We’re just getting used to the idea of Nokia launching a full-on multi-touch mobile phone, but one designer has bigger and better things in mind for future phone displays: we’re talking proper shape-changing, three dimensional bumpiness!

Designer Rune Larsen has come up with a Nokia-branded concept phone with a two-layer plastic touch screen. The bottom layer is rigid while the top one is flexible, and sandwiched between the two is a layer of liquid. This liquid can be pushed around into various shapes, which then press up through the upper layer and form on-screen bumps and lumps which can be pressed like buttons – so you could have a regular keypad shape for everyday use, switching it to a full fat QWERTY number when you want to type out an email or text message. Basically, the idea is that you get the smartness of a touch screen combined with the tactile feel of a physical keypad.

Before we all get too carried away, here comes the bucket of cold water: this is just a concept, and there’s no technology around (at least that we’re aware of) that could bring this to an actual product in the near future. Looks like we’ll have to keep dreaming for now…

Source: Gizmodo

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