By
showing off a phone with a flexible screen, Samsung is hinting at a day
when we might fold up our large
phone or tablet screens as if they were
maps.
The Korean electronics company provided a glimpse of such a
device at a keynote speech Wednesday at the International CES gadget
show in Las Vegas. It's an annual showcase of the latest TVs, computers
and other consumer-electronic devices.
WHAT IT IS: Brian Berkeley,
head of Samsung Electronics Co.'s display lab in San Jose, Calif.,
demonstrated a phone that consists of a matchbox-sized hard enclosure,
with a paper-thin, flexible color screen attached to one end. The screen
doesn't appear flexible enough to fold in half like a piece of paper,
but it could bend into a tube.
The company also showed a video of a
future concept, with a phone-sized device that opens up like a book,
revealing a tablet-sized screen inside.
HOW IT WORKS: The screen
uses organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. Only a thin layer of these
chemicals is needed to produce a bright, colorful screen. They're used
in many Samsung phones already, though with glass screens. For the
bendable phone, Samsung laid the chemicals over thin plastic instead of
glass. That's a trick you can't pull off with liquid crystals in
standard displays.
WHY YOU'D WANT IT: You could pack a bigger
screen in your pocket. In a more conventional application, Berkeley
demonstrated a phone with a display that's rigid, but bent around the
edges of the device, so it can show incoming messages even with a cover
over the main screen. In short, OLEDs free designers to make gadgets
with curved screens.
WHY IT MIGHT NOT WORK: It's tough to use a
touch screen if it bends away from your finger. Flexible OLED screens
have been demonstrated for years, but the OLED chemicals are extremely
sensitive to oxygen, so they need to be completely sealed off from the
air. Volume production of flexible displays that remain airtight has so
far stumped engineers. Samsung's screens aren't yet flexible enough to
fold, just bend.
AVAILABILITY: Samsung didn't say anything about when flexible displays might be commercialized.
"The
concept of the flexible screen has been around for some time, but it
finally looks as if Samsung is really going to deliver on that
technology," said Stephen Bell, an analyst with Keystone Global.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
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