Mobile By Lee Mathews Jun. 6, 2014 11:00 am
The new generation of flip phones is getting closer all the time. Nokia and Advanced Film Device have just shown off a flexible OLED display that can be bent at least 100,000 times over its lifespan.
They showed off two variations that smartphone makers might be interested in — likely the exact same display manipulated in two different ways by their bending units. One was folded in half like a greeting card, the other into thirds like a two-fold wallet.
The resilient, 5.9-inch display is large enough to satisfy today’s phablet lovers, though its pixel density is fairly low. At 249ppi, that’s less than half the density of the panel LG is expected to use in the G3 (5.5 inches at a resolution of 1440 by 2560, for 534ppi). PPI isn’t everything, of course, and there are plenty of consumers out there that would trade a bit of crispness for the convenience of a foldable device.
Folded in half, the display can bend to a radius of just 2mm; the double fold also doubles the radius to 4mm, logically enough. It make for a shorter yet bulkier to stuff into your pocket handset, but I personally wouldn’t mind something that felt more like a wallet than a graphing calculator in my pants.
It’s not just about making a more compact device, either. The prototype screen can also respond to folding by changing the content that’s displayed — like flipping pages in a book. It’s very similar to what the Queen’s University Paperphone can do.
As for when we’ll see displays like this in real devices we can buy, that’s anyone’s guess. We’ve been waiting on foldables for quite some time… Remember this E-Ink prototype that was shown off back in 2011?
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They showed off two variations that smartphone makers might be interested in — likely the exact same display manipulated in two different ways by their bending units. One was folded in half like a greeting card, the other into thirds like a two-fold wallet.
The resilient, 5.9-inch display is large enough to satisfy today’s phablet lovers, though its pixel density is fairly low. At 249ppi, that’s less than half the density of the panel LG is expected to use in the G3 (5.5 inches at a resolution of 1440 by 2560, for 534ppi). PPI isn’t everything, of course, and there are plenty of consumers out there that would trade a bit of crispness for the convenience of a foldable device.
Folded in half, the display can bend to a radius of just 2mm; the double fold also doubles the radius to 4mm, logically enough. It make for a shorter yet bulkier to stuff into your pocket handset, but I personally wouldn’t mind something that felt more like a wallet than a graphing calculator in my pants.
It’s not just about making a more compact device, either. The prototype screen can also respond to folding by changing the content that’s displayed — like flipping pages in a book. It’s very similar to what the Queen’s University Paperphone can do.
As for when we’ll see displays like this in real devices we can buy, that’s anyone’s guess. We’ve been waiting on foldables for quite some time… Remember this E-Ink prototype that was shown off back in 2011?
More...
