Folding LCDs

Samsung has come up with a novel approach to Liquid Crystal Displays – the foldable LCD. Originally planned for use in e-book readers, the foldable LCD also has potential in the mobile phone and PDA market.

Samsung has come up with a novel approach to Liquid Crystal Displays – the foldable LCD. Originally planned for use in e-book readers, the foldable LCD also has potential in the mobile phone and PDA market.

At 17cm by 12.7cm and capable of folding along a central axis, the LCD screen cost close to $US 1.54 million to develop. According to this report, mass production of the display is planned to start later this year.

Once the technology is perfected, it could prove very useful in the mobile phone/PDA market. We've seen several products that attempt to fill both roles, however there is always the physical size versus display area problem – large screens are good for PDAs, but make a phone bulky and hard to use. A mobile with a foldable screen, perhaps where two sides fold out from a central point in PDA mode to produce a large thin display, would allow companies to produce a product with the potential to replace the entire 'separate PDA' concept. It would also allow them to keep the physical size of the unit relatively small, making it much more useful as a phone than current phone/PDA hybrids.