LG vows to make flexi-screen smart phone before Christmas
If the South Korean company can pull it off, you could be unwrapping a bendy blower this yuletide.
You could be unwrapping a flexible smart phone this yuletide, as LG has reportedly vowed to launch a mobile with a bendy screen before Christmas.
LG's vice president of mobile has said he will work with the company's display division to craft the flexible phone, the Wall Street Journal reports (paywall link), tipping the mysterious mobile to launch in the fourth quarter.
The smart phone would reportedly sport an OLED screen, which is the same brightly lit tech that adorns Samsung's Galaxy S series of smart phones.
This fresh report chimes with previous rumours that LG would have a flexible display ready before the end of the year. Samsung is also beavering away on a bendy-screen concept called 'Youm' -- a concept that's both exciting and loads of fun to say out loud.
Although flexible displays conjure mental images of scrunching up a smart phone like a piece of paper and stuffing it in your pocket, in reality these screens are likely to be less malleable. Instead they might use the flexible element to wrap around the corners of a solid device, and then weld it firmly in place.
You'd still get a screen with an exciting curve in it though, as per the video of Samsung's tech that I've embedded below.
LG is behind Apple and Samsung in the smart phone race, but proved with the Nexus 4 that it has the nous to make a cracking gadget. If it's the first company to release a smart phone with a warped screen -- and gets it right first time -- it could pull ahead in the mobile race.
Are bendy smart phone screens the future? Or a pointless gimmick? Let me know in the comments, or on our flexible Facebook wall.