Redux
A British firm has developed a smartphone screen that doubles as a speaker – and that’s not the only trick it has up its sleeve
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We speak to the Cambridgeshire-based firm that has developed a smartphone screen technology capable of doubling as a high-quality speaker – but that’s not the only trick up its sleeve.
Most companies are happy to have a product that serves one need – the paradoxically named Redux has one product that meets two. Not only can its technology turn a display into a speaker, potentially saving phone and tablet makers from having to find room for separate speakers in their already sardine-like chassis; it also provides dynamic haptic feedback on the screen, enabling developers to create virtual, tactile buttons on almost any type of surface.
If it works as promised, Redux is sitting on a technology that could utterly transform mobile devices as well as industrial machinery – all those flat screen displays used on factory floors could suddenly provide haptic feedback, letting workers know they actually pressed a “button” even above the din of machinery.
For the time being, however, the company is only planning to pursue one of those avenues. We sat down with CEO Nedko Ivanov to find out which and why.
Good vibrations
You might be used to our smartphone and laptop reviewers marking devices down if they show any signs of bend or flex, but that ability to flex a rigid surface is precisely what Redux takes advantage of – albeit at a miniscule scale. “The technology is based on bending waves,” Ivanov explained. “The bending waves that are created by bending a rigid surface. It can work across any rigid surface, most typically displays where we have an opportunity to bend the cover glass of the display, but it can work on metal or plastic or any other surface.”
Those waves create an extraordinary double effect. “When the bending waves are created on the surface, at the low part of the frequency range they create a haptics effect, and at the high end of the frequency range they produce an audio effect,” explained Ivanov.
That audio is of sufficient quality and volume to surpass the speakers found in today’s mobile devices, Ivanov boasts. “Compared to a micro-speaker in the smartphone, compared to a micro-speaker in tablet or laptop, this is where we can create significant benefit – creating a lot bigger bandwidth, much better-quality sound, much louder – and this actually comes at a space-saving effect in a device where space comes at a significant premium.”
Even if audiophiles quibble over the sound quality, there are other distinct advantages to building speakers into a screen, aside from creating more room inside the device itself. Lay the screen flat on a hard surface such as a desk, for instance, and it turns that desktop into an additional loudspeaker. What’s more, by building the speaker into the screen, you close off another point of entry for device-nuking substances such as water or dust. “With our technology, not only can you create a much better-quality sound, you can also seal the device and make it totally waterproof or dustproof, and much more of a pleasure to the eye,” said Ivanov.
Pressing the right buttons
The screen speakers are, of course, only half the story. Redux can also use signal-processing algorithms to focus that low-frequency haptic feedback onto particular parts of a screen. That means Redux can both create virtual buttons on a display and can move them. So if the menus on a piece of industrial machinery change, the physical buttons beneath them move too. A machine that previously needed a dozen buttons might now need only a small slab of glass. What’s more, the haptics are of such high fidelity that users can even feel a button’s edge under their finger, according to Ivanov.
And although many other virtual button solutions exist – most notably the home button on Apple’s iPhone 7 – Ivanov claims Redux’s technology is far ahead of its rivals. “One of the reasons for not adopting this technology [at present] is because it’s very badly implemented,” he said. “If you look at the iPhone 7, you don’t really have the flexibility to change the strength of the haptic feedback, to change the sensitivity of the button, to change the size of the button. And actually, when you provide the haptic effect, it vibrates pretty much the whole device.”
This ability to alter the size and sensitivity of feedback has applications across a wide range of machinery, not just consumer devices. “There are applications pretty much across every sector that has user interfaces,” said Ivanov. “There are applications in industrial controls, there are applications in medical devices, there are applications in payment terminals…”
Yet even though he continues to list a huge number of potential uses for the haptics technology, Redux is currently focusing its resources on the screen speakers. “We have multiple proof of concepts with customers in the smart-home space, in the tablet and laptop space, as well as automotive industries,” the CEO claimed. “We have currently about ten live customers and you’re going to see products live in 2018, in mass production.” Why not chase the industrial machinery market at the same time? “As a small business if you don’t focus your efforts, you run out of cash very quickly,” said Ivanov. “We decided to focus on automotive and consumer electronics at this stage.”
The second attempt
When Ivanov warns of the dangers of the firm spreading itself too thin, he speaks from experience. Redux was formed in 2013, having acquired the intellectual property portfolio and key engineering resources from a company called HiWave.
HiWave was a FTSE-listed company, born out of the 2010 merger between NXT and Audium Semiconductor, but it seems the company soared too close to the sun. According to a report from Cambridge-based Business
Weekly, “NXT saddled itself with a millstone of over 500 patents, which have cost the company [HiWave] a small fortune to maintain”. When no buyer was found for the company, Redux was formed and cherry-picked the patents it needed to bring its technology to market.
“The patent portfolio was expensive,” said Ivanov. “We had to trim it down, because it was very expensive to maintain. But in addition to that we have continued to innovate over the past four years.” The company now has in the region of 180 patents, with another 50 pending – a portfolio of less than half the size that helped send its predecessor to the wall.
The company remains in Cambridgeshire with a modest staff of 20 people, further keeping costs under control by working with contract manufacturers in Asia, rather than attempting to manufacture the components needed for its displays itself.
The end game
If Redux’s technology delivers on its promise, you’d think it would be a very valuable company indeed. Innovation among smartphone manufacturers has almost ground to a crawl – when was the last time you saw something as groundbreaking or exciting as a screen that also doubles as a speaker?
That, we put it to Ivanov, must surely make Redux ripe for a takeover from a company keen to have this potential game-changer to itself, rather than licensing its tech to a variety of manufacturers across different industries. “My experience from the past is that if you try and build a business to be sold, you’re at a very high risk of selling yourself short of the opportunity,” said Ivanov.
Not that he’s writing off the possibility. “We build the business to be a great business. If along the way, somebody comes with an offer, we’ll consider it, shareholders will consider it and if it’s an attractive offer, we’ll sell the business, of course.”
Indeed, he goes on to suggest that gaining exclusive rights to the technology creates “a very, very good case for buying us,” before stopping just short of putting out For Sale signs on the company’s front lawn. “We’re a tech starter business and the ultimate goal, of course, is to provide a return on investment to shareholders, so exit is always something that we will consider, for the right price at the right time.”
If you’re a smartphone, tablet or laptop maker who doesn’t like the look of those speaker grilles on the base of your devices, you know who to call.
A machine that previously needed a dozen physical buttons might now need only a small slab of glass