The dream of a rollable display for mobile devices continues to take shape in the real world. Today, Samsung Display announced a new screen technology called Rollable Flex, which it says could be used for tablets or laptops.
Samsung Display's press release says that a Rollable Flex screen can expand from just 49 mm (1.9 inches) in length to 254.4 mm (10.10 inches). It stated:
While conventional foldable or slidable form factors offer up to three times the scalability, Rollable Flex overcomes such limitations by enabling the display to be rolled and unrolled on an O-shaped axis like a scroll. “The biggest feature is that we were able to turn a difficult-to-carry large-sized display into a portable form factor by making it rollable,” Samsung Display explained.
The company is showing off a demo of Rollable Flex this week at the annual SID Display Week in Los Angeles. The press release didn't state how far along this new display technology was in development, nor when it might be made available for consumer tablets and notebooks.
Rollable displays have become something of a trend at trade shows this year. Motorola showed off a prototype of a phone with a rollable screen at the Mobile World Congress trade show in February. Its parent company Lenovo also showed off a notebook with a rollable display at the same trade show.
In addition to Rollable Flex, Samsung showed a new design for a foldable smartphone, called Flex In & Out. It has a display that can be folded either inward or outward. It stated:
The ‘in-folding’ form factor, which can only be folded inward, requires a separate external panel to view information while folded, but the Flex In & Out is able to overcome that, opening up the possibility of lighter and thinner foldable phones.
Again, there's no word on when this screen will be included in a real smartphone. Samsung also will show off a combo foldable-slidable phone display, the Flex Hybrid, along with a more standard sliding display, the Slidable Flex Solo, which can expand from 13 inches to 17 inches.
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