Ahead of CES 2023, Samsung Display is showcasing new screen technology, capable of bending and stretching. The Korean firm imagines the smartphone of the future.
The CES, a huge tech show held every year in Las Vegas, is always an opportunity to discover daring technologies. And the 2023 edition has not yet opened its doors when Samsung is already taking the lead in presenting a revolutionary concept. In a press release published on January 3the Display branch of the Korean firm presents what it calls Flex Hybrid, an OLED screen capable of bending, but also of stretching.
Samsung Display does not provide many details on its prototype likely to become a smartphone or a tablet – if the technology proves itself. But we know that this screen can offer several display formats: 10.5 inches in 4:3 or 12.4 inches in 16:10. The company, specialist in the folding format, now intends to develop the roll-up argument. In his eyes, this is the future of mobile devices.
What’s the point of having a foldable and stretchable screen?
Flex Hybrid technology is two-in-one: the screen can bend on its left side and stretch on its right side. On paper, such benefits can make you smile: if not to make people talk at CES, a theater where many technological quirks meet, what good is it? Concretely, we can imagine a product that could improve the user experience of folding smartphones available today.
Unfolded, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 offers a diagonal of 7.6 inches. The idea behind the Flex Hybrid would therefore be to enlarge the display surface without increasing the measurements of the smartphone. It’s a rather implacable logic: we invented folding devices to offer a large surface in the most portable format possible. Folded up, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 takes up barely more space than a conventional smartphone, while offering the ergonomics of a small tablet. With the Flex Hybrid, Samsung Display intends to go a step further by transforming a small tablet into a large tablet, or even into a real computer like Asus and Lenovo have already done.
In short, the solution proposed by Samsung Display would make it possible to add even more use cases to folding smartphones, with a third possible screen format:
- Case 1: smartphone (screen folded);
- Case 2: small tablet (screen unfolded);
- Case 3: large tablet (screen unfolded and stretched).
Depending on the content read, this technology may be relevant. For example, if we can be satisfied with the small tablet for a YouTube video, we will prefer the larger format for playing a movie. In addition, Samsung Display plans to develop stretchable screens for laptops. The objective would be to offer 13 to 14 inch screens capable of becoming a 17.3 inch screen by stretching on both sides. Again, the goal is to gain portability, without sacrificing ease of use.
Please note, we are only talking about prototypes here – offered by Samsung Display (not to be confused with Samsung Electronics). Perhaps they will never become products intended for the general public. On this point, we can still be reassuring: Samsung has managed to make the folding smartphone a desirable object, despite several mockeries and a complicated first generation.
