Want a flexible smartphone? Arubixs is bringing it for you.

Smartphones have become a necessity. Smartphones have become a part of our lives and like every such necessity, there are innovations coming up in this field too.

Have you ever wondered of a "flexible, waterproof and shatterproof" smartphone? Well, Arubixs is working to make this dream of yours come true. According to their website, Phones designs today are stagnant, repetitive, lacking innovation and out of the box design. They combined  the best parts from various phones and created the first prototype of "Portal" which was durable, ergonomic and simply different from others.

Arubixs revealed the concept on Youtube on 24 Sep 2014 and has garnered more than 400,000 views. Arubixs's Marketing manager Kaavya Reddy says in the video that "The problem with the mobile market right now is that the phones are all the same. What little differentiation they have is that some are less user-friendly and some are less durable." She holds a phone with a shattered screen and says that "things like this still happen.  So we're here to change that!"

Portal is a wearable smartphone which will also have features of a fitness tracker and measure your heart rate. It sports 4 cameras- two on the sides to film outward on either side, while the other two are front facing cameras. Portal runs on Android with a custom user interface to support Portal's additional feature and it will support most apps from the Google Play Store. 

Here's an update: Portal may run on normal Android but with a custom Portal UI Launcher.

Arubixs will be launching two phones, Portal 400 (click for specifications) and Portal 600 (click for specifications).

Arubixs actually came out of company founder Brandon Mairs' frustation while he was developing an application. He hoped that it would look and work the same on iOS and Android. Contrary to what he would have liked, the app worked great on android but not so great on iOS. He felt it was silly that the application worked well on one platform but not so great on another.

According to an article on Upstart Business Journal, Mairs felt that the solution to this was to make a whole new operating system that could make Java or iOS apps look and function equally well.

Unable to find an unaffiliated Phone manufacturer, Mairs decided to build the smartphone on his own. 

The problem however is that it's been a very long time and the device has exceeded it's launch period. A co-founder who left the team about two years ago told his partner that he'd be lucky to have his sci-fi device out in 2015 (It's 2016 now!). 

On their project on fund raising website Indiegogo, they stated "Motorola's design to delivery time takes twelve to eighteenth months. We can and will beat that." There is however no clue about their actual product release.

In an e-mail, they stated "We recently changed up our release plans by partnering with a major US carrier, who will be announced in the next several months. We are now working with them to release in the fall of 2016 and are working on a competitive MSRP price. Our carrier does sell unlocked phones for international sales and you will be able to order it online to have shipped to your country." But it's quite difficult to believe in a newcomer who has made many such claims in the past.

Many people feel that this concept is just a hoax but this concept actually has real faces behind it. Portal can be a serious game changer if it launches withing a few months and would get companies like Samsung and LG to work. LG has launched it's G Flex which isn't really flexible but it does come back to it's actual structure after being bend to some extent. Samsung is working with Microsoft and it might launch it's really flexible phone with an OLED display later this year.

I agree on their claim that there isn't really much of innovation in the mobile market. New phones just have the upgraded memories or run on updated operating systems. We have come from black & white display basic phones to flip phones with colour displays and features like bluetooth and camera and now to touch screen smart phones. Flexible phones can be the new trend! Let's hope that Arubixs becomes successful in launching it's concept which they feel is the real change in the market where there isn't much innovation in technology.