Transparent smartphone display lets you control the device from both sides

June 2, 2012

It has been awhile since we last watched Tom Cruise swipe transparent displays hanging in the air in front of him in the movie A.I. That's what comes to mind from the prototype smartphone NTT Docomo and Fujitsu have developed in Japan: you can touch the transparent screen from both sides. This enables new touch-sensitive features, like holding an object in place from one side and moving parts of the object from the other side of the screen.

Today, touch screen user interface on mobile devices and computers feels so natural that we tend to wonder how we survived without them earlier. We also tend to wonder what comes next. Perfect voice recognition, perhaps? Gesture recognition, like on Kinect or on Wii?

Or maybe transparent display that can be controlled from both sides? The demonstration on the following video where the man holds the Rubik cube from the back side in place and rotates one of the planes of the cube from the front side is impressive.

Video: Hands-on with a smartphone with transparent touch screen