14 DAY TRIAL // We've all heard about flexible displays by now, even if most prototypes (and there have only been prototypes, for the most part) proved to be very limited in their ability to bend. Japanese researchers may have just invented the best example yet though.
The flexible displays seen in the past were limited mostly to producing an inward or outward curvature of a few degrees and nothing more.
This permitted the creation of bendable phone prototypes and curved smartphones that don't offer flexibility. The display, while flexible, isn't enduring enough to survive much manipulation, so phone makers are playing it safe.
There are also some bendable TVs out there, which can curve inward when you send the remote command.
Now, though, we finally have an example of a truly foldable screen to fawn over, and it's the Japanese who pulled it off.
The tri-fold smartphone screen
You can see it in the attached picture gallery, such as it is. The screen is an OLED technology that can fold like a really, really squashed “S.” Kal-El would be appalled, no doubt. Unless he argues that the Symbol of the House of El is not an “S” so it has nothing to do with him. But we digress.
Recently, there was a trade show in Yokonama City. There, researchers at Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory company revealed their 8.7-inch panel.
This OLED screen can be folded three times without any damage, which opens up a totally new way to extend the screen area of an otherwise tiny mobile device.
It may not be quite on the same level as the screens that can toll into sticks as thin as pens or fold again and again without complications. But it's not like those technologies exist in any form beyond that of patents for now, secret and otherwise obscure experiments aside.
You might be interested in knowing that the screen, despite the size and unusual ability to change form, has Full HD resolution and 245 ppi pixel density.
Applications for the tri-fold display
We don't know of any, but it's probably just because the new display is pretty new and is only now getting media coverage. Since it can give life to that new type of mobile device that everyone is looking forward to, we have trouble imagining the inventors failing to get contracts for their technology. Our bet is that some triple-fold smartphone or tablet will be revealed in the coming months.
