[cronjobma]

There was a time where I’d get super hyped when reading these kinds of promises. Transparent displays, foldable screens. Truth is, we’ve been seeing working prototypes at events like CES for more than 15 years. I’ve come to realize the mechanics of these companies are similar to the car industry. New technologies are presented for the same reason car companies present strange concept cars: PR

[derefr]

The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass rectangles.

I’m wondering if this is a “flying car” thing—if actually handing consumers ultra-thin bendable (but not actually creasable) panels would be a dumb idea, because consumers would try to exceed their tolerances and break them too easily.

(This is also, I think, why we don’t see more optical cabling standards outside of the enterprise space. The average consumer can’t be trusted to install a glass-fibre cable run without breaking it; and when they break it, they’ll get angry, because glass-fibre cables still cost a lot of money. And plastic-fibre cabling, though more tolerant, is far less of an improvement over copper, especially in attenuation distance.)

[ccajas]

>The weird thing is that we already have “foldable screens.” But all the phone makers have done with them is to give us slightly less bezel on our glass rectangles.

Also, aren't they used for curved TV screens and computer monitors?

[ttflee]

Sure, these displays are bendable. But they have a zero Gaussian curvature everywhere. What would be really interesting is to build a flat panel display that has a non-zero Gaussian curvature at will, e.g. one that fits into the windshield of a car.

There is a catch that programming these displays require one to learn differential geometry as a prerequisite.

[dbbk]

So are you saying that you want an actual foldable phone? Putting aside the technical challenges of getting the chassis and other components to also fold, I struggle to understand why this would be a desirable product.

[avhon1]

Fitting an 8.5"x11" or A4-sized display into your pocket would be pretty handy.

[bpicolo]

Bending and not-creasable sounds like a tough ask. Those tend to come hand in hand.

[abrowne]

It could roll up into a tube instead of folding and creasing.

[monk_e_boy]

I'm not convinced about rollable or foldable displays. My phones screen is reachable with one hand, any bigger and I have to use two hands. So I use my tablet. If I need to get work done I use a PC or laptop.

I don't see the point of a display that folds. The display would be worse than any I currently own. It would be more prone to breakage due to the nature of what you're asking it to do.

I think it's one of those technologies that sounds neat, but in reality is not that useful (like 3D tvs)

[brokenmachine]

I don't even think it sounds that neat. Just silly.

3D TV's, on the other hand, I love and am very sad that they're now not being produced... Just when the size and resolution of TVs is getting good enough to make them worthwhile.

[candiodari]

I must say using foldable displays to have 2 display sizes does seem very useful to me. If you can ignore the blatant cheesyness and sexism this video does illustrate it pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKG7XRsG9KQ

(plus it would sell really well)

[monk_e_boy]

Maybe it was the content, but what I saw on 3D tv was just flat characters in a 3d environment. It felt very weird. The clunky glasses were a bit rubbish. All a bit weird and crap.

[JKCalhoun]

Bendable displays require bendable batteries, bendable circuit boards, bendable cases, etc....

[candiodari]

All of which we know how to do. A display IS a circuit board by the way.

[userbinator]

People will crease them anyway, accidental or otherwise.

Flexible displays are far too fragile to be practical except in applications where they're literally bent only once and then affixed to something for the rest of their life.

[com2kid]

Foldable screens have been real and orderable for several years.

There problem is, screens need a protective layer on top, and bendable glass tech hasn't caught up. You need to be able to embed a touch layer, have good optical clarity, be scratch resistant, and impart resistant.

I've, gently, played with production ready bendable LCDs. Then realized that they weren't practical for any of the sci-fi scenarios I had imagined.

[delecti]

> any of the sci-fi scenarios I had imagined

This is what I don't get. It's entirely possible that I'm particularly unimaginative, but I can't even think of any devices with screens I'd want to bend. All of my devices bend exactly as much as I want them to: none (or at least negligibly).

[est]

> but I can't even think of any devices with screens I'd want to bend

How about a 75' TV you can carry around like a scroll.

[com2kid]

> How about a 75' TV you can carry around like a scroll.

It'd be a rather thick scroll. :)

The problem of break-ability again comes to mind.

The use case is niche. All the electronics for control still have to be there, so it isn't featherweight or anything, and it is not exactly pocket sized, and now the screen is really fragile.

[jd20]

What about just curved displays? Like in a car, it seems there could be some interesting applications (screen embedded in windshield, or wrapped around the dashboard or center console). Is curved glass tech also a barrier, because I feel I've seen very few applications of curved displays other than TV's.

[stouset]

It’s infinitely cheaper if you want a display on your windshield to just do what aviation HUDs do: project upward onto the glass.

[com2kid]

> What about just curved displays?

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/band

http://www.samsung.com/global/galaxy/gear-fit2/

Actual applications do exist. :)

Lots of cell phones have screens with a slight curve to them now days. Or in the case of Samsung's edge displays, a rather dramatic curve.

To the best of my knowledge, neither display in those fitness products was flexible, just bendable.

I know that as of a few years ago, Corning was hard at work on flexible "glass" for flexible displays.

[bitL]

These might be good for pro photographers, though right now I'd rather see affordable 300dpi A4-sized e-book reader with tablet pen and SD card slot to get rid of all my paperwork.

[DenisM]

There you go

https://remarkable.com

[sharpercoder]

This looks quite promising. However, I'm burned a few too many times buying and trying to use tablets for drawing.

I had the iliad, a Dutch tablet in the very early days of e-paper. Slow, unworkable latency in drawing, buggy software, low support for digital book formats. I tried a few other e-paper devices since then, but they didn't improve on a lot.

The Microsoft Surface 2 seriously improved on this space. But it was still not feeling well - still too much lag. And then there is the huge problem that Windows is not suitable for tablets - it's a nightmare to work with compared to Android.

Surface 3 got it right enough, the feel is good enough to do some serious drawing on it. Microsoft OneNote is pretty much ideal for many usecases but has its cases where it becomes unbearingly slow. I have not yet tried the Surface 4 or the iPad Pro.

The ideal of an android device with a OneNote version which supports plugins and an app-store on a color latencyless e-paper display is still a decade away it seems.

[bitL]

Thanks! 226dpi and a bit pricey though, so I'll keep an eye for next gens. 300dpi is the minimum my eyes find acceptable from a closer distance.

[DenisM]

Note that it's black and white, you may have different perception with this screen compared to LCDs.

[bitL]

I used to have 300dpi Kindle Voyage so I know where my threshold with e-ink lies. 220dpi is on my 4k monitor, which is fine from 3ft/1m but not closer.

[blitmap]

I was excited circa 2016 for OLED displays in laptops but that seems to have died. They were only 2560x1440 panels - I was hoping for 2160p to follow.

[duckfruit]

Me too! I was so hyped up about it that I got myself a ThinkPad X1 Yoga with an OLED display. But wish I'd realized sooner that putting an amazing display in a shit laptop still leaves you with .... a shit laptop.

[viperscape]

I don't understand in general why OLED is taking so long to be mass produced for TVs and monitors. It's like just now becoming mainstream, with what seems like two actually purchasable products.

[fro0116]

I have an LG OLED TV, and I would recommend against purchasing an OLED for monitor use.

Burn-in is still a huge issue. I've used mine for about a year and the red channel is full of distracting burn-in patterns from still elements on my screen from things like wallpapers, tiled window borders, taskbar/docks, HUDs from games, etc.

Does anyone know if MicroLEDs could suffer from burn-in as well? I.e. do they also degrade over time based on usage?

[MikusR]

LG oled TVs are all white with a color filter.

[fro0116]

That's news to me. Any idea what would explain the red channel exhibiting much more burn-in than others then?

I've tested this by filling my screen with each color, and burn-in is by far the most visible with a red fill.

[nicoburns]

I don't have any knowledge of LEDs, but I believe that the burn in problems in OLEDs are due to them wearing out due to them being organic, which presumably wouldn't affect artificial micro leds