TORONTO - A research team at Queen's University has entered the race to slim down tablets and smartphones with a plastic, flexible prototype that's just about paper thin.

The Kingston, Ont.-based school's Human Media Lab has unveiled a type of e-paper technology nicknamed the PaperPhone, which is described as a bendable iPhone.

The device measures in at 9.5 centimetres diagonally and its electronics are housed in a thin, flexible film that can be rolled up. It has a grayscale E Ink screen — which looks like the display on Amazon's Kindle e-reader — and has a few applications that can make phone calls, play music, read ebooks and maps.

Rather than using buttons or touchscreen controls, the plastic device responds to different bends. Commands are triggered by bending the corners of the device, or rolling the right edge backward or forward. Users can also use a stylus to write on the screen.

As technology evolves and gets cheaper, a high-resolution colour screen capable of playing video would be integrated into the device, as well as some touchscreen controls, says creator Roel Vertegaal.

While he admits that the technology would likely need at least five to 10 years to go mass market in a sophisticated way, he boldly claims the research team is onto a game-changing technology.

"It's a replacement for the computer as we know it, it's going to change everything," Vertegaal says.

While the prototype cost about $7,000 to make, he imagines they could be cheaply mass produced in a few years.

And because the technology would eventually be so inexpensive, consumers and businesses could conceivably own multiple e-paper sheets in different sizes — including huge desk-covering displays— and have them stacked on their desks or in a bag. Users could choose to use just one sheet, or multitask with a pile of electronic paper.

"We're trying to capture some of the spirit of paper in the office, which clearly has not disappeared and hasn't disappeared for a reason," Vertegaal says.

"You could have a PDF on one display — or several stacked in a pile one on top of another — and write on it, annotate it, read it, navigate it and that would be your portable computer. Then if you want to bring it with you, you roll it and stick it in their pocket like you can do with paper."

Eventually, the devices will also be designed to fold, Vertegaal says, so you could carry around a huge screen that neatly folds into a shirt pocket.

But the Queen's researchers have competition in the development of e-paper type products.

Arizona State University has partnered with the likes of Boeing, HP and Lockheed Martin in researching similar technology and is expected to conduct a test sometime this year with the U.S. Army.

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Video of the PaperPhone: http://www.bit.ly/msBxb2