Nokia GEM: Phone of the future with touchscreen in every surface

Nokia Gem, the ultimate customizable device

Nokia is planning some big things for the future. Their GEM concept phone has displays on the front and back, and the device would totally adapt to whatever you were using it for at any given moment.

As said at Nokia Coversations, Nokia releases a new phone concept – GEM – which revolutionizes mobile design by turning the entire handset into a touchscreen.

Finnish handset maker Nokia has unveiled a concept phone with a touchscreen that covers the entire surface of the device. It’s called the Gem – “because polished precious stones have several sides.”

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Nokia Research Center, the Finland-based mobile phone maker has unveiled a new concept phone, the Nokia Gem.

We like crazy concepts especially when it comes to Nokia Concept Lab.

The unique thing about the Gem is that the entire surface of the handset is a touchscreen that changes its appearance depending upon on the function chosen by the user.

Choose the map function, for example, and the whole of one side of the device (the virtual keypad will disappear) will show a detailed, close-up map of your location while the other side will show a broader view.

No space is left unused – even the sides of the device are covered in virtual buttons.

On the Nokia Conversations blog, the man who led the team that created the Gem, Jarkko Saunamäki, said, “Now, when you launch an application like the camera, your mobile phone still looks like a mobile phone, but with Gem, when you launch the camera application, the whole phone looks like a camera.”

The first thing you’ll notice about the phone is how it’s completely made out of displays. Every inch of the device can be used to display images and text, and can be interacted with.

Jarkko calls the Gem “the ultimate customizable device.”

It’s even suggested that advertising messages could be displayed on the back of the phone, enabling its user to receive a discount on bills.

When you consider all the dead space on the surface of a mobile phone, it makes perfect sense to somehow utilize it. However, with the whole device transformed into a touchscreen, it’s not entirely clear how you’d avoid accidentally activating functions you don’t want to activate. But overall it looks like a rather cool bit of kit that one day, in one form or another, could become part of the handsets of the future.