Nokia showed a prototype phone with a flexible display at Nokia World. While that wasn’t ready for prime-time and we have no date for a commercial launch, it seems Samsung has started to hurry up their plans of getting on to the market. During an investors call, Samsung revealed that they are aiming to get flexible displays to their line of offerings out in the first half of 2012.
Back in 2009 we had seen a rugged 2.8″ OLED display from Samsung that was foldable. The video showed that the technology was real and raised confidence on the technology, however it is only now that we are hearing about a commercial release. Venturebeat points that back in January Samsung had acquired Liquivista, a company that specialized electrowetting display technology that offers low-power, flexible and transparent screens. We would believe that Samsung is only improving on its own transparent and foldable displays with the technology it acquired from Liquivista. Just like they did with foldable displays in 2009, Samsung had a showcase of transparent displays in 2010 and they had planned to release a laptop with that transparent display within a year!
Seeing the pace at which Samsung is rolling out Android smarphones and tablets, we quite believe in their ability to bring new products to the market. But just as before, we are skeptical about the utility of fold-able and transparent displays on a regular smartphone / tablet. Companies investing in the technology might see usage in the long run, but unless it leads to a really pathbreaking design offering a new utility, we aren’t sure if this would ever go mass market.
Here is a look again at Nokia’s flexible phone:
