Nokia is working with another company to help develop new bendable OLED display panels that could, in theory, be used in future smartphones. Two prototypes of those displays were shown a few days ago at the SID 2014 academic conference in San Diego.
The display technology, which was co-developed by Semiconductor Energy Laboratory, is made by placing color filter, TFT and OLED layers between two sealing layers and a flexible substrate. In their flat form, the displays measure 5.9 inches with a display resolution of 1280x720.
One of the prototypes shown during the conference could be folded in half, much like a book, with a curvature radius of just 2mm. The other could be folded into three sections. with a radius of 4mm. Both displays could be folded up to 100,000 times, according to the developers.
Of course, these are research prototypes and are nowhere near a commercial release. However, it's clear that development of flexible displays is ongoing and it's only a matter of time before this technology reaches the consumer smartphone and tablet markets.
Source: Nikkei Technology
