How many people do you know with a smashed iPhone 4 screen? As smartphones have gotten cleverer, they seem to have gotten more fragile. A bit like people. Thing is, it needn’t be this way: LG’s working on bendy OLED display tech that it claims is unbreakable. And it could be in your next phone.
Remember those rulers at school that proudly boasted of being ‘shatter resistant’? You know how everyone thought that actually meant ‘shatter proof’ and inevitably snapped them in two? That’s not really the kind of ‘bendy’ we’re talking about here.
A report from Phone Arena says that LG is working on bendy OLED displays with plastic substrates, but that they’re designed for use in current mobile phones. In other words, the tech isn’t destined for flexible phones, merely that it aims to make screens for current-gen phones that won’t shatter when you drop them.
LG display tech: Bendy Kindles inbound?
The dream of a bendy smartphone that you can wrap around your wrist is a while off, but a flexible, reasonably-sized OLED display that can be dumped inside a modern mobile? That’s almost here.
According to PA’s source, LG’s “3.5-gen” production plant is set to fire up at the end of this year, which means it could find its way into handsets as early as Q1 2013. Ready for phones that don’t shatter into smithereens when you drop them? Us too.
