Is it a smart phone or is it a smart watch? Maybe, it’s both.
A small Chinese startup called Moxi Group is introducing a device that doubles as a smartphone and a watch. The product has a bendable touchscreen that can wrap around a user’s wrist to be worn as either a watch or bracelet. When unraveled, it works like any regular non-bendable smartphone.
Moxi, pronounced as “mou-she,” is shorthand for “graphene” in Chinese. It is the name of the material that gives the display its bendy characteristic.
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According to CNN Money, graphene is the thinnest material in the world. It also has desirable qualities that make it an ideal material. Graphene, which is made from a layer of carbon atoms arranged in a highly conductive way, is strong, light, flexible and transparent.
The company, based in the city of Chongquing, claims to have already produced a prototype of the phone. By the end of this year, Moxi plans on putting 100,000 of its devices on China’s market.
However, one drawback of the product is that it will be initially available with only black-and-white displays. Moxi Group Executive Vice President Congsheng Yu, told Digital Trends:
“Black-and-white phones are much easier to make. The color model power usage is also much higher than that of the black-and-white unit.”
The company is working towards providing full-color screens, a much more difficult feat, by 2018. The phones released by the end of 2016 will be priced at around $760 each while the most affordable version of an Apple 6S iPhone costs $806 in China.
