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A student in the UK has invented a mobile phone made from paper that doubles as a greeting card.
 Stephen Forshaw, a Salford University student, invented the gadget, which won the Sony Design Award last week. Forshaw calls the new greeting card handset "PS Call me."
The unit looks like a normal greeting card, but inside the paper of the card is a tiny transmitter and receiver as well as a small speaker and microphone. To use it, consumers will buy the card and write a special message inside it, the same as they would with any birthday or anniversary card. But after the message is written, the buyer "calls" the card with a mobile to permanently log his or her phone number into the unit.
After the card is posted or given to the recipient, it can be opened and read like any other greeting card. But it can also be folded into a phone-like shape and the recipient can simply press a button on the card and it will call the sender. Moreover, the conversation between the recipient and the sender is recorded on the chip as a memento of the special moment between the two parties.
The new device will cost around STG10, depending on how much credit is purchased to make calls, and 39-year-old Forshaw has been invited to Tokyo by Sony to discuss future possibilities for the device. "It's beyond my wildest dreams. I never thought I'd win an opportunity like this," Forshaw told the UK's Sun newspaper, who broke the story.
Forshaw is not the first to invent a mobile phone made of paper. Last year New Jersey-based Dieceland Technologies said it would launch a disposable paper mobile phone made primarily of cardboard. Dieceland, which is controlled by inventor Randi Altschul, plans to sell its phones for around USD10, which will come with 60 minutes of calling time. Altschul's company is also working on a paper laptop computer.
Meanwhile, in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, New Horizons Technologies International introduced its disposable mobile phone, known as the Cyclone. Its product sells for around USD40 in the US and is already commercially available. New Horizon's phone is made of a combination of plastic and paper components.
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