LG designs flexible screens for curved smart phones

The Korean phonemaker will mass produce a flexible smart phone panel, with curved-screen phones to come in 2014. But with Samsung set to release its own curved OLED screen phone, a bendable, rollable future may closer than we think. 

|
Reuters
President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Jong-seok Park presents the LG G2 smartphone during a news conference in New York, on August 7, 2013.

The future is curved, according to LG.

The Korean mobile company announced it will mass-produce the first-ever curved OLED smart phone panels, with an accompanying hand set to come in 2014. This marks the first mass-market steps into a flexible screen industry that looks to be taking over the technology market in the next decade.

LG’s panel has a plastic (rather than glass) display that is bendable and unbreakable. Though mounted in a fixed screen – meaning you can’t bend it every which way, yet – it will be curved from top to bottom in order to better fit the contour of a person's face. Plus, weighing in at 0.015 pounds and with a 6-inch screen, it will be one of the lightest panels on the market and the largest OLED screen available. This is an important feature, as OLED picture quality is extra rich, and better appreciated on a larger screen device. In other words: the detail is going to be outstanding.

LG’s announcement comes on the heels of Samsung saying it will release a special-edition curved OLED screen Galaxy Note 3 sometime in October. LG and Samsung have been running a tight race in the curved OLED screen market, both releasing a curved OLED screen TV this past year, and Samsung showed off a prototype flexible screen smart phone in January. But if flexible-screen-market projections pan out, there is no doubt other companies will be quick to round out their own screens. 

What kind of growth are we talking? Research company IHS Display Bank projects that flexible screen technology production will increase to 800 million units by 2020 as screens become more and more flexible. Right now, we’re in the first stage: displays made for thinness and durability, but unable to be manipulated outside of its mounted case. What’s ahead? Bendable screens, roll-able screens, and finally “disposable displays that cost so little that they can serve as a replacement for paper,” according to the IHS press release

But don’t recycle all your paper yet: that tech is still a ways off. More likely we’ll see flexible screens next used for wearable technology, such as smart watches, with displays that wrap around wrists like snap bracelets.

At this point, the tech hasn’t found its way to the mass market due to production costs. Those curved OLED screen TVs that Samsung and LG released both retail for about $9,000. But with this LG announcement, mass-production of flexible screens (and the potential replacement of paper) may not be that far off. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to LG designs flexible screens for curved smart phones
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/1007/LG-designs-flexible-screens-for-curved-smart-phones
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe