LG are fast becoming the one to watch in what appears to be a pioneering flexible screen market. Already the manufacturer has shown off these freeform screens and flexible displays capable of being bent and rolled into shape. Now the company has shown off their next generation screens, which expand and improve on the concept.
The new 18 inch panel unveiled at a press show recently is the next step on the path to portable cordless bendy screens. The device they showed off could be flexed and bent, and a pair of smaller test models shown off were transparent and could be rolled up respectively. The rollable version was able to be curled up into a cylinder with a 3cm diameter.
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The reason these new screens are coming into their own is the rise of OLED technology – the organic light emitting diodes that produce their own light as opposed to requiring a backlight. These groundbreaking display diodes aren’t just good at lighting up on their own – they have deeper, darker colors than LCD (liquid crystal display) screens and also of course can be flexed and bent.
The applications of such screens are pretty numerous, you could, for example create a curved wall and stick the screens onto it to guide people in a certain direction like a signpost… of course this would look very cool, as well as making for a futuristic conversation piece. These screens can be stuck on and peeled off any magnetic surface, so you could take your TV with you between rooms as long as you have a magnetic wall for it to stick to.
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Of course, the price tag is decidedly massive. OLED screens are hugely expensive since the technology is in its infancy – as mass production gets underway of course the price will go down, but for the time being a 65-inch OLED TV from LG without bendyness goes for $9000, quite the hefty amount considering it’s for all intents and purposes just a TV.
There will no doubt be progress in this new TV market by 2017, when LG promises there will be a 60+ inches version of the flexible screen completed. However, the manufacture of such screens is tricky, with LG reporting a 20% failure rate. in other words, 20 out of every hundred of the screens they make just don’t work. Competition in this emerging market will no doubt yield results sooner than we can predict. Watch this space.
Via: IFL Science
Via: Science Alert