Flexible Phones 'Out By 2013'

dryriver sends this quote from a BBC report: "Imagine treating your phone like a piece of paper. Roll it up. Drop it. Squish it in your backpack. Step on it — without any damage. Researchers are working on just such handsets — razor-thin, paper-like and bendable. There have already been prototypes, attracting crowds at gadget shows. But rumors abound that next year will see the launch of the first bendy phone. Numerous companies are working on the technology — LG, Philips, Sharp, Sony and Nokia among them — although reports suggest that South Korean phone manufacturer Samsung will be the first to deliver. Samsung favors smartphones with so-called flexible OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology, and is confident that they will be 'very popular among consumers worldwide.' Their screens will be 'foldable, rollable, wearable and more, [and] will allow for a high degree of durability through their use of a plastic substrate that is thinner, lighter and more flexible than conventional LCD technology,' says a Samsung spokesperson.'"

Comments

Not interested

[Anonymous Coward]

It "sounds" like a good idea, but honestly it isn't, it's just a worthless hyped up feature that weak minded people will buy into. Flexible phone? Keep it.

Re:Not interested

[Sponge Bath]

No, you cracked the screen on your last 2 phones because you are careless, so much so that they cracked in spite of being made of gorilla glass.

I know people like this. Occasional accidents happen to everyone. Frequent and repeated damage is not an accident. Those who frequently smash gorilla glass will end up destroying a floppy phone just as quick. Oops, I dropped it in a blender. Oops, I dropped it on a burning grill.

Re:Not interested

[Grizzley9]

Thinner and lighter are always nice

I submit there is a point at where a device can be too light and thin with the way we need to interact with them. For me, the critiques over the iPhone 5 were right; it is too light. I would fumble that all around, though if it was flexible, perhaps it wouldn't matter but it seems you're just trading one problem for another. (That and call me when batteries become paper thin, let alone electrical contacts that are still good after being flexed a few tens of thousand times.)

Feature Set

[Iron (III) Chloride]

One question to ask would be the types of features that one would expect in these flexible phones in the near-term. Would they start out as having similar capabilities as current smartphones in the market, or would they be more "bread-and-butter" phones that will only see incorporation of additional capabilities in the long term?

Of greater interest to me is the possibility of flexible laptops and tablets. The reason why we have things like smartphones is because we can easily carry them around (e.g. in our pocket) and still have sufficient computational for day-to-day use. But if we can get flexible tablets/laptops to work, I think that'd be very useful in terms of packing greater amounts of computational power per (folded) surface area.

Re:This will not be used for what they think

[dyingtolive]

To me, bendable means that I can put it in my pocket and have it conform to the curve of my leg. I could put it in my back pocket and it might be less uncomfortable. Hell, if it's paper thin and as flexible as the summary claims it will be, I could stick the damn thing in my wallet.

Whatever "killer feature" even means, I'm in for one.