if they'd just provide a service that provides voice-only that doesn't lose connections, or even syllables, like the old, reliable wired service once did. Instead, they've corrupted the wired service so it doesn't work so well any longer.

Nevertheless, what I want is that instrument that you mentioned, which is why I want it to be a notebook, with a huge HDD, and the ability to play the games, though I don't do that, and check my bank balance at the same time, though I'm not sure I need it to do that other thing you mentioned.

As I said, a flexible display might make a nice peripheral attached to a "smartphone" so an old-timer like me can read the display, and a flexible keyboard, some of which already exist, would, likewise make a nice attachment.

What puzzles me is that there isn't a simple USB/PCMCIA/whatever attachment to a notebook that allows the thing to connect to the cellular network and make the notebook, with the addition of a headset, function as a cellphone, without any additional hardware. Goodness knows, they seem to want, as you've pointed out, a cellphone that behaves as a PC.

I'm thinking that the addition of a "real" keyboard would cut down on the fatalities caused by texting-while-driving. I don't know whether youngsters in the UK or on the Continent are as stupid as those over here, but I'd be surprised if texting-while-driving isn't also a problem on that side of the ocean. Having a "real" keyboard would, at least, allow the ones who text while driving to keep their eyes on the road, since many of them don't have to look at the keyboard when typing, though who knows where their minds would be. Stupid notions, like that, aside, the flexible display would be a convenient way to add a notebook-sized display to a more-or-less normal-sized "smartphone," and I'm told micro-USB-intefaced keyboards are already in use on some of them.

My point, at long last, is that the flexible display does, indeed have some possible practical use, limited, perhaps, but significant.

RE