Portal – the flexible wearable smartphone

A lot of us look back at the days when you could accidentally drop your mobile phone without having to then replace its screen and other parts. Ah, Nokia 1310. With all the hullabaloo surrounding the iPhone 6 Plus and #bendgate, how about a phone that’s designed to bend and flex? How about the wearable Portal phone?

It has been at least a couple of years since companies started to promise us flexible, shatterproof phones but, at long last, it looks like they may start to appear.

The Portal smartphone isn’t going to shatter when you drop it and, as it is totally flexible, you can even wear it on your forearm.

The company behind Portal, Arubixis, states that the phone is designed to succeed where smartwatches have so far failed.

We have all said at some point or other that smartwatches are not really good enough for texting, making calls, or doing anything practical – short of skipping audio tracks or alerting you to the text that’s just been received.

The Portal is designed to fit comfortably on your arm and so giving you the whole smartphone experience from your wrist.

It’s waterproof and shatterproof so, even if you decide not to wear it on your wrist, it’s still a useful phone to have. If you do keep the Portal in your pocket all day it will bend, but that’s because it’s supposed to rather than it being a potentially dangerous design flaw 😉

The phone comes packing a skinned version of Android (it isn’t clear which version) and the user interface (UI) looks pretty good to me.

It is equipped with a 6-inch display, 2GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, a 3,200 mAh battery, 4G, NFC, and wireless charging. I am intrigued to find out what cell is being used as that will also have to be flexible, surely?

Arubixis are currently seeking funds on Indiegogo in order to bring the phone to market, and a $349 (£214) pledge will get you your own version of the phone when it launches sometime next September.

If 6-inches is too much for you, then you can wait a little while longer because there are plans to release a 4-inch version of the Portal in early 2016.

As well as NFC it looks like the Portal will be sporting some monitors as it looks as though there’s a heartrate readout on the UI renders.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. Would you have one?

I can see folding phones (Samsung Foldiplay anyone?) being the next thing – who here reckons that Apple will say that they were the first? 😛

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