Transparent Smartphones – Our New Reality?

Transparent phones are no longer reserved for Hollywood blockbusters like Iron Man 2 and Minority Report, they are fast becoming a reality. There have been many attempts by various manufacturers, including the Xperia Pureness from Sony Ericsson; none of them came close and most of them never hit the shelves. Recently however, Taiwan based Polytron Technologies has come up with what they believe will be the phone of the future, and it might launch sooner than you think.

This new concept by Polytron is already familiar to some, but users around the world are yet to experience this technology, which was only visible in movies. This handy new smartphone features almost invisible parts such as electric wires, and the rest of the device is completely transparent. Some of its components will be visible for now, such as the battery, camera and memory card. These are placed on the rear of the casing.The smartphone business is already booming, making this a very viable opportunity for phone manufacturers – and other players too.

Polytron makes use of their patented Switchable Glass Technology, with is a conductive OLED that used liquid crystals to display the images. If the phone is switched off, these crystals have a cloudy white form, but when the phone is switched on, it activates an electric current and they will realign to form a variety of text, icons, or images. When the phone goes into production, Polytron will manufacture it with a darker colour glass to help camouflage the SIM card, speaker and camera. The phone might also feature a double sided display, allowing you to use it on both sides.

Paul Cooper, Marketing Manager of Tokyoflash, says that “The challenge of using a transparent display is that you need to store the batteries somewhere else.” This is only one of the challenges that Polytron has to face, but they have big plans ahead – even a transparent tablet.