This week LG Display unveiled the world’s first high-resolution stretchable display. Yes, screens that can stretch, bend, twist, and even fold. The neat new technology is reportedly durable enough to one day end up on clothes and other wearable devices.
The stretchable “free-form displays” shown off are 12-inches in size and can easily stretch to 14-inches or get twisted without any damage. Furthermore, the press release states that the screen doesn’t distort, even after stretching by 20 percent, which sounds pretty wild. Samsung’s foldable phones are rugged, but the screens are still relatively fragile.
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While a stretchable display certainly sounds promising, LG Display mentioned that it only has a resolution of 100 pixels per inch, which is substantially lower than what we’re used to on smartphones and smartwatches.
LG Display states that these all-new stretchy screens are made from a silicon material similar to contact lenses, then integrated with a micro-LED light source. Thanks to the thin, flexible, and stretchy design, these screens can contour to skin, fabric, or even metal surfaces like a car or taxi.
I’m just imagining a world where social media influencers run ads on their clothes or an Uber driver playing paid commercials on the side of a car zipping down the highway.
It’s worth noting that this is very much the early stages of such a technology. According to LG Display, it’s not an easy process, and the display is still attached to a ribbon cable that connects to a source device. But who knows, eventually, it could use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi to show images or video.
The company hopes to eventually commercialize this revolutionary new technology, but we’ll have to wait and see.
via Engadget