Nokia shows off foldable OLED displays for future smartphones at SID conference

Nokia's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) along with its Japanese subsidiary Advanced Film Device (AFD) showcased two foldable 5.9-inch OLED panels at the annual Display Week conference in San Diego. The companies announced this at the Society for Information Display (SID), an academic conference on display technologies reported Nikkei Tech.[caption id="attachment_225618" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The three-fold display being folded (Image Courtesy: Nikkei Tech)[/caption] Among the two displays, one is a single-fold one which can be folded like a book. The other is a three-fold display that can be folded in three. When completely unfolded, the 5.9-inch panels have a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and a pixel density of 249ppi respectively. [caption id="attachment_225617" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The book fold type display can be bent up to a display curvature of 2mm[/caption] For the foldable display, colour filter, TFT and OLED layers are sandwiched between two sets of a sealing layer and flexible substrate. According to SEL, the book type and three fold displays can be bent up to a curvature radii of 2mm and 4mm respectively. The displays can be bent over 100,000 times says SEL. So far we have already seen foldable or bendable displays from LG and Samsung as well. LG was supposed to start mass production towards the end of 2013, whereas Samsung had promised a 5.7-inch flexible display panels around October last year. We have seen the Samsung Round and LG G Flex, but their radius of curvature is nowhere close to what we have seen with Nokia's book-fold display seen above. Samsung's Youm display technology is closer in nature to Nokia's tech than anything else currently in the market. Nokia hasn't released any information as to when we will start seeing these kind of displays in the retail markets. With Samsung, LG and now Nokia getting on to the flexible display bandwagon, it is a matter of time before these displays start flooding the market. When that will happen, is anyone's guess.