14 DAY TRIAL // Flexible displays have been said for a long time now to be on their way to the smartphone market, and it seems that 2013 will finally bring them to shelves.
There have been numerous reports on the matter already, and various companies confirmed that they were working on such technology and that they were also ready to bring it to end-users.
South Korean mobile phone makers LG and Samsung were previously said to be the pioneers in the field, with smartphones set to hit shelves in early 2013, but it seems that Nokia is no stranger to the matter either.
In fact, the Finnish handset vendor is said to be already testing flexible displays in prototype devices, and to doing it quite successfully.
“We are working on flexible, bendable and transparent displays and surfaces that could in future be part of flexible phones, tablets, TVs and solar cells,” Prof Ferrari, who is working with Nokia, told BBC.
“Samsung is really quite advanced in this field, but we here in Cambridge have done some great work on Nokia's prototypes as well.”
While Samsung is said to be working on the release of flexible OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) screens, which are expected to prove highly popular among users, Nokia is looking into other technologies that would enable it to deliver flexible panels, it seems.
One thing that appears to be certain, however, is that Samsung will manage to release devices with bendable displays first, yet it’s uncertain whether it will also manage to pack the displays inside flexible devices.
This means that other components of the smartphone will have to be bendable as well, and it remains to be seen whether the leading South Korean handset vendor indeed managed to find the correct recipe for that.
Also next year, smartphones packing full HD panels on the front are expected to be the norm, while the overall size of these screens is expected to top 5 inches.