Flipstik: gecko feet for your smartphone. With a hook
An accessory is supposed to make your mobile stick to all smooth surfaces. But what do you have to do to stop your smartphone from sticking? The test in Las Vegas shows that weak points in a product don't necessarily have to be where you think they are.
"Hey, are you two Youtubers?" a guy at the Intel stand asks us.
"Something like that," says video producer Stephanie Tresch.
Twins are standing next to the young man with the camera. They are dressed up as characters from the anime series Naruto. Or at least wearing the uniform of the ninjas from the Hokage village. For whatever reason, because the outfit actually has nothing to do with why they are here. The three of them belong to Flipstik, a manufacturer of mobile phone accessories, and want to bring their product to the masses at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, wow the press and maybe even find customers and/or investors.
The Naruto twins and the photographer tell us about Flipstik, an adhesive thing that is supposed to make your mobile stick to any surface. As the demo is quite impressive and the boys are quite funny, Stephanie and I set ourselves a goal: what do we have to do to make the Flipstik stop sticking?
Biomimicry as a business model
Flipstik is a kind of sticker for your mobile. You stick it to the back of your mobile and then to any smooth surface. The concept is modelled on the foot of a gecko. Because geckos stick to any smooth surface. Except Teflon. As this has fascinated researchers for decades, recreating the gecko's foot is one of the most prominent fields of research in biomimicry. This branch of research attempts to imitate and possibly even optimise things from nature.
Gecko feet are fascinating in that they do not rely on adhesives or the like. Put simply, a gecko bonds with the surface to which it adheres at an atomic level. Tiny hairs with a diameter of just a few micrometres and an electrical charge make this possible. This connection is only broken when the toe is rotated. The gecko and the wall return to their original atomic state and the gecko continues to crawl.
This is exactly the model that Flipstik has taken as its inspiration. According to the Naruto twins, the adhesive part sticks to any smooth surface.
The test in downtown Vegas
After visiting the trade fair, we find ourselves on the Las Vegas Strip, the street you see on every postcard. Everything is lit up and loud. Even the streetlights have built-in speakers that play music of some kind.
We stick Stephanie's Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with Flipstik to a window. Works without any problems. How boring. Let's escalate this.
"Come on, let's see if this thing can take a punch," says the video producer.
Good idea. We get into a Lyft taxi, a rival company to Uber, and set off. Because public transport in Las Vegas is something the locals have heard of. There are buses, but they are only used by strange people who live in about four towns near the few bus stops.
On the journey, I stick my Huawei Mate 20 Pro with Flipstik on the outside of the side window. I feel slightly uncomfortable because I actually still need the smartphone. If it falls off, it will end up under the wheels of the avalanche of cars behind us. No problem either. Flipstik holds. Still boring.
A few minutes later, we're in the 9 Dragons Fight Shop. We tell owner Cyle Burgess about our idea. He agrees to mount the Mate 20 Pro with Flipstik on a claw and then put a targeted punch underneath it.
Cyle takes a swing.
Cyle throws a punch.
The Mate 20 Pro flies about three metres through the air, hits a wall above a shelf of judo belts and lands hard on the floor.
Has Flipstik failed?
So half. Because the gecko foot surface is still stuck to the claw. However, the phone has detached from the other adhesive side, which is obviously not coated with Geckofuss technology.
"Wouldn't it make more sense if both sides were made with Gecko?" asks Cyle.
Actually it would, wouldn't it?
You can find all articles on CES 2019 here.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.