Comments on: Samsung plans flexible, unbreakable, lighter phones

By: JRT

JRT — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:38:42 +0000

I’m waiting for a smartphone with an 8-12″ diagonal display that I can fold in half or thirds and put in my pocket. Then I’ll spend the money to buy one.

By: Eric Tallent

Eric Tallent — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:08:58 +0000

What we are talking about here are viable wrist phone watches – Dick Tracy style. They will allow us to send text messages, browse the web, send email, perform sophisticated calculations, do word processing, track our whereabouts, record audio and video, monitor our vital signs, help us cybernetically adapt our fitness goals in real time, and if we are lucky tell time and make phone calls.

By: baraba

baraba — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 19:43:17 +0000

Well I can see an application as a future newspaper – if the and chip, battery are in one corner and you have a full two pages fold-able newspaper that updates every day and you still can check out older news – well that would be neat :)

By: steve

steve — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 17:22:51 +0000

I’d wager you have a plastic protector over your gorilla glass even today. We’d just be putting plastic screen protectors over OLED instead of glass.

By: melajara

melajara — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 16:32:15 +0000

You could wear one in permanence around your wrist as a bracelet, remember the wristwatch?

By: snake0

snake0 — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:52:32 +0000

Gotta love that WSJ paywall

By: Publius

Publius — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:47:28 +0000

They have bendable batteries and processors too? And plastic screen means back to major scratch-ville. Give me my gorilla glass. No doubt bendable devices are coming, but I didn’t think all the pieces awere available yet.

By: David

David — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:31:15 +0000

The future is probably going to be wearable phones with retina displays – But why are we still talking about ‘phones’? What we have today are multi-function devices.

By: AZryan

AZryan — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:25:05 +0000

Sam, the ones in the pic are in thick metal frames to hold those shapes so everyone at the trade show can see that the screen bends (and that nobody messes with the prototypes). They’re not idiots who forgot what people’s pockets or hands look like.

That being said…I think they’d like to have the screen ‘fold’ over a much smaller phone, but that’s a problem in that phone still needs space for board, chips, battery, etc. AND these screen can’t bend ‘that’ sharply. That’s why they only risked displaying a ~1 inch dia. bend in the prototypes.
The first one might just end up being a thinner, lighter phone with less worry of the screen ‘cracking’ if you dropped it. BUT the phone itself could still break w/ a fall and I’d think the screen would be less scratch resistant than a GorillaGlass type (or the same if both have the same protective film.

For a bending screen being ‘neato’ tech, I don’t think they know what to do with it yet. I’ve seen designs where the screen ‘unrolls’, but that creates a (relatively) large thickness when rolled up. No one wants a ‘fat pen phone’.
They know what they need to do to make it functional, but I don’t think they can do it yet -on top of the woman saying the screen itself is hard to make. This is mostly hype, but it does sound like screens like this are pretty close to market. I’d think people would love desktop versions, but I’m sure those would be a fortune.

I want my 110″ OLED roll-down self-projection screen. The perfect home theater display and best fit for a bendy, paper-thin display. But that’ll be another decade probably.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:23:43 +0000

I doubt the phones are actually going to be in those shapes. That’s just a demo to show the technology’s capabilities, because it wouldn’t be obvious in an image otherwise.

By: SpottedMarley

SpottedMarley — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:39:34 +0000

Ringer options in the near future:

Sound / Vibrate / Wiggle

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:21:17 +0000

The technology’s great in theory, but if they manufacture phones in the shapes featured above they look highly impractical, they would be a nightmare to try and fit in your pocket.

Also I see the benefit of the phone being more flexible therefore less prone to breakages, however I can’t see any really benefits of a phone that you can bend. Plus, if that was to be the case, then all the components would need to be bendable as well, which would be much more difficult.