Tag Archives: flexible display

LG stretchable display could lay the foundations for a very weird future

Posted on by

Ever heard of those fashion shows where designers try to make a statement by including some sort of display or screen on accessories or the dresses themselves? While those eccentric designs are limited to runways, for now, they could also be a preview of our near future. Some companies would paint a future that revolves around the metaverse, but it’s more likely that we will live in a world filled with screens everywhere. Not just on billboards or walls, mind, but on almost everything that can hold a display panel. And if stretchable displays like LG’s ever become commonplace, you can bet it will only be a matter of time before you’ll see patches of screens on clothes as well.

Designer: LG

Display makers like LG have been playing around with screens that don’t necessarily have to lay flat all the time. Even though it has exited the mobile market, LG has been investing heavily in flexible screens for use in electronics like rollable TVs and foldable devices. But while those can bend and roll, they actually don’t change their overall shape or dimensions. Those are pretty much fixed, which makes them unsuitable for certain applications that require screens to be deformable as well.

That’s exactly the kind of screen that LG’s display-making arm just showed off. Without getting into the messy technical details, what it revealed was a 12-inch screen that can be pulled and stretched to cover the same area as a 14-inch screen. The screen has a pixel density of 100dpi, which is far below what you might be used to on smartphones today. The fact that it can even have that level of quality when you twist and stretch the screen is already quite the feat.

It might sound like yet another crazy invention that’s looking for a problem to solve, but it admittedly has more flexible applications, pardon the pun, beyond foldable laptops and rollable TVs. Because of the way these displays can stretch even for just a little bit, they’re perfect for use in industries such as textile, automotive, fashion, mobility, furniture, and the like. You can imagine clothes that can display not just logos but animation, which sounds both cool and dystopian at the same time, well in line with the start of a cyberpunk era.

At the same time, however, that also means that there will be an even greater amount of information overload and distractions in our foreseeable future. It will be a sweet opportunity for advertisers, with all the concerns that it would entail. That said, this LG stretchable display is still at an early stage, so it’s too early to tell whether it will become a standard artifact of our near-future.

The post LG stretchable display could lay the foundations for a very weird future first appeared on Yanko Design.

Totem Rollable OLED display offers enhanced viewing and doubles as a soundbar

Posted on by

Totem Rollable Display with Soundbar

Display technology has come a long way, and we believe it will continue to improve. Gadget screens have advanced, and now flexible and rollable displays are available.

The rollable display technology is relatively new, but it is now used on smartphones. Soon, we’ll see foldable tablets and rollable TVs or touchscreen windows or walls in the future. The possibilities are endless with rollable OLED displays, especially tech giants like LG are at the forefront.

Designers: Richard Bone and Jisu Yun (Studio BooBoon)

Totem Flexible Display with Soundbar

The LG Display team has launched a competition that aimed to imagine and design products and experiences that would present the use of LG digital displays. The designs should be able to enhance users’ lives and offer new experiences.

The competition now has 20 shortlisted designs. Some of the designs include cabinet doors with digital displays or foldable televisions that transform into lamps. One notable project was the Totem by Studio BooBoon, led by designers Richard Bone and Jisu Yun. The Tokyo-based team came up with the Totem, a rollable display and soundbar in one.

Totem Rollable Display Demo

The name Totem is used because of the upright position. It can also be used horizontally or as a soundbar only. It was presented in different colors: Charcoal, White, Blue Grey, and Salmon. The device is also said to offer a minimal footprint.

Totem Rollable Display with Soundbar

The flexible OLED technology is being used here. It allows a customizable display that can be adjusted to different heights. This reminds us of a portable and retractable projector screen.

The LG Display’s rollable OLED technology is used and then integrated with a soundbar. Studio Booboon’s Totem can be used as a soundbar only. It may also be used for digital graphics with music. We can imagine this being used in different establishments for promotion, education, or information.

Totem Rollable Display Soundbar

The Totem can also be used at home as you can use it in different ways. It can be an intelligent display for screen mirroring or a freestanding speaker. It offers enhanced viewing of videos or movies when you want a more prominent display. The designers shared they “wanted to create something characterful and sculptural that blends into the user’s home seamlessly.” The result is the Totem which is very versatile.

Totem Rollable Display Details

The screen-soundbar concept appears like an art piece by itself. It’s minimalist, and its aesthetics can fit most interiors. It’s part of the shortlist for a competition where only five will be recognized as top designers. The overall winner will get €35,000 in June. The second placer will get €20,000; the third place will receive €15,000, while the fourth placer will get €10,000, and the last one will get €8,000.

Totem Flexible Display

The post Totem Rollable OLED display offers enhanced viewing and doubles as a soundbar first appeared on Yanko Design.

Want to build your own folding phone? Royole’s DIY flexible display kit lets you experiment with foldable tech

Posted on by

From the company that created the world’s first folding phone comes an open-source kit to help anyone build their own products with flexible displays!

Royole has shown an incredible ability to find the right niche and pivot at the right time with their technological offerings. The company arguably built the first-ever flexible smartphone – the FlexPai – outpacing even Samsung, and their RoKit now aims at helping democratize the fully flexible display (FFD), so creatives and designers can tinker with it, building their own products too.

This means you could practically build your own folding smartphone (like how Scotty Allen’s been trying make his own folding iPhone). Royole’s even showcased an example of what they would make and it looks rather impressive. A baton-shaped device with a rolled-up on the inside and a massive camera facing outwards. Sort of like unscrolling a parchment, the display rolls outwards. It isn’t a folding phone in strict terms (it’s more of a rolling phone), but the idea Royole is getting at is that with their kit, you can now prototype something absolutely absurd; something that even Apple, Google, Samsung, or Microsoft is too scared to make!

The RoKit comes packaged in a pretty impressive aluminum briefcase (scroll for the images below), containing everything you need to bring your unique tech idea to life. The upper part of the briefcase houses Royole’s 3rd Generation Cicada Wing 7.8-inch fully flexible touch-sensitive display, while the lower half of the briefcase contains a development motherboard running Android 10, an HDMI adapter (in case you want to connect your flexible display to an existing computer like a Raspberry Pi, smartphone, laptop, or any other gadget), and a bunch of power cables for good measure.

The idea behind the RoKit, says Royole Founder and CEO Dr. Bill Liu, is to “invite every industry to imagine and design with flexibility in mind, unfolding new possibilities for creators and accelerating the development of flexible solutions in all walks of life.” Envisioned as the world’s first open platform flexible electronics development kit, the RoKit allows other creators to do exactly what Royole did with the FlexPai in 2018 – create electronic products that the world has never seen before.

For now, the RoKit is available for purchase on the Royole website in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and China. Priced at $959, it definitely isn’t cheap, although one could make the case that it’s just about affordable for being able to test out and prototype a product before you actually develop it with mass-produced flexible displays.

Designer: Royole

Royole just launched a DIY ‘Flexible Display Kit’ to help anyone build and prototype folding tech products!

Posted on by

From the company that created the world’s first folding phone comes an open-source kit to help anyone build their own products with flexible displays!

Royole has shown an incredible ability to find the right niche and pivot at the right time with their technological offerings. The company arguably built the first-ever flexible smartphone – the FlexPai – outpacing even Samsung, and their RoKit now aims at helping democratize the fully flexible display (FFD), so creatives and designers can tinker with it, building their own products too.

The kit comes packaged in a pretty impressive aluminum briefcase, containing everything you need to bring your unique tech idea to life. The upper part of the briefcase houses Royole’s 3rd Generation Cicada Wing 7.8-inch fully flexible touch-sensitive display, while the lower half of the briefcase contains a development motherboard running Android 10, an HDMI adapter (in case you want to connect your flexible display to an existing computer like a Raspberry Pi, smartphone, laptop, or any other gadget), and a bunch of power cables for good measure.

The idea behind the RoKit, says Royole Founder and CEO Dr. Bill Liu, is to “invite every industry to imagine and design with flexibility in mind, unfolding new possibilities for creators and accelerating the development of flexible solutions in all walks of life.” Envisioned as the world’s first open platform flexible electronics development kit, the RoKit allows other creators to do exactly what Royole did with the FlexPai in 2018 – create electronic products that the world has never seen before.

To show how limitless their flexible displays can be, Royole’s even created a few conceptual products that highlight exactly how folding screens can make products sleeker, smaller, and better. The examples include (as shown below) handheld gimbals/cameras with slide-out displays, a slick monolithic computer that transitions magically from keyboard to screen (I wonder where they got that idea from), and even a helmet with a rear display that contours perfectly to the shape of the head, allowing you to communicate efficiently with drivers behind you.

For now, the RoKit is available for purchase on the Royole website in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and China. Priced at $959, it definitely isn’t cheap, although one could make the case that it’s just about affordable for being able to test out and prototype a product before you actually develop it with mass-produced flexible displays.

Designer: Royole

Royole’s flexible display technology could one day turn your car’s glove box into an interactive dashboard

Posted on by

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

The company has very rapidly realized it isn’t in the foldable phones business… it’s in the foldable everything business.

Images have surfaced on the internet of a rather interesting concept employing Royole‘s flexible display technology. Created by Zhiyuan Xing, a designer based out of Shenzhen, the Flexible Car Dashboard poses an interesting hot-take – what if instead of doors on a glove compartment, you just had a display that bent open like a curtain? The Flexible Car Dashboard explores that very possibility, creating an interactive display in an area that would otherwise be a utilitarian panel of knobs and compartments.

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

The panel is a long, vertical display that folds open from the top as well as the bottom, revealing storage areas and charging spots underneath. The display sits in place via magnetic closures that allow it to snap shut, and when you want to access the space underneath, unfold it as if you were turning a page or lifting the edge of a carpet. The GIF above should really help demonstrate how incredibly handy and innovative it is.

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Joined to the car’s dashboard at the center, the display opens both ways. The upper part has a tray-style design, letting you keep your phones in it (potentially even being able to wirelessly charge them or UV sanitize them), while the lower part is almost like a box to dump other items you need but are less likely to use (charging cables, AirTag, earphones, power bank, etc).

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

A crucial part of the display’s design is its lip, which lets you easily get a grip and open it outwards. The display comes mounted on a thick layer of some kind of elastomer, giving it some resistance (so you don’t damage it by tugging too hard), while a magnetic closure system allows the flap to satisfyingly snap shut. The display even knows when to switch off when you’re bending it, helping protect it against any accidental damage. It switches back on when shut, displaying the screen where it last left off.

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

What this concept presents is something rather remarkable, and a fresh design direction from Royole, which hasn’t really seen much success in the doldrums that is the folding phone industry. A flexible dashboard display, however, would be a great way to expand its catalog while proposing something that isn’t really a novelty, but instead is a very interesting feature. The area where the Royole Flexible Car Dashboard would sit is essentially purely functional – currently occupied by a radio (which people hardly use), AC air vents (which could easily be relocated), and perhaps a slot for a car charger. The Flexible Car Dashboard proposes we use that space for something better, something more cutting-edge with upcoming cars. Designed as a dashboard that could easily see itself integrated into smart-cars or semi-autonomous cars, it gives you a large sprawling screen that’s ideal for accessing the car’s smart features like the Map, Music Player, or other in-car controls. Fold it over and you’ve got the benefit of storage too! Storage, might I add, that would escape the sight of most thieves!

Designer: Zhiyuan Xing

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Royole Flexible Display Car Dashboard

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 concept has a bezel-less folding screen and the S21’s camera module

Posted on by

Why is it called the Z Flip 3? Where’s the Z Flip 2? Irrelevant questions!

Not sure if it’s the design of the phone or the render quality, but 3D artist Giuseppe Spinelli really seems to have outdone himself with this concept phone. Spinelli’s rendition of the Galaxy Z Flip 3 sports the best parts of all of Samsung’s past phones. On the inside, it has even thinner bezels than its 2020 counterpart, a hole-punch camera for good measure, and that gorgeous vertical folding screen. Flip the phone over and it’s reminiscent of the Moto Razr, with a pretty neat secondary display, and a camera module with three lenses (a first for vertical folding phones).

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 comes as a collaboration between Spinelli (also known by his internet alias Snoreyn) and LetsGoDigital. Rumor is, it’ll be accompanied by the Z Fold 3 as well, allowing Samsung to finally become a veteran in the folding phone space. LGD reports that the Z Flip 3 will feature an improved hinge and even points out that Samsung was awarded a patent for a Z Flip with triple cameras back in 2020.

The phone’s clamshell folding design makes it incredibly compact when folded, allowing it to occupy much less space in your pocket as compared to a Z Fold-style book-shaped folding design. Samsung’s also rumored to be working on a pamphlet-style smartphone with a triple-panel double-hinge setup, but there’s really no word of when the company will officially announce it.

The thickness can often be a deterring factor for consumers. Aside from the visible crease seen in most folding smartphone screens, the thickness becomes a bone of contention between manufacturers and consumers. However, Samsung recently even registered a trademark for the term ‘Armor Frame’, implying a slimmer yet more durable outer body. This would effectively make newer devices slimmer than their older counterparts, hopefully ‘slimming’ the gap between regular smartphones and foldables.

Some of the most interesting features of the Z Flip 3 include its small secondary screen, which actually works as more than just a notification center. Just like the Galaxy Z Fold 2, the larger secondary screen is touch-sensitive, and can be used when the phone is shut. You could potentially watch videos, navigate music apps, browse through notifications, and even use the screen as a viewfinder while clicking images with that stellar 3-camera setup. Another thing that makes the Z Flip 3 interesting is its format, which allows you to use it in an L-shaped mini-laptop mode. The vertically elongated screen may be great for browsing content or scrolling, but when split in half, provides ample real estate for media on the top, and a keyboard at the bottom. It would make sense for the Z Flip 3 to continue exploiting this feature. Moreover, the Z Flip 3 could even feature virtual buttons, as suggested by Spinelli and LGD. This essentially boosts functionality and makes it easier to control volume without constantly having to reach the upper left corner of the phone. Samsung is slated to debut the Z Flip 3 at its Galaxy Unpacked event in the summer of 2021, with as many as 8 different colors to choose from.

Designer: Giuseppe Spinelli for LetsGoDigital

This gorgeous curved OLED TV a fusion of Samsung’s Serif TV and its G9 Odyssey Gaming Monitor

Posted on by




I somehow never really liked Samsung’s Serif TV. Sure, it treats the television as furniture, but furniture and tech aren’t the same. I expect my furniture to be useful and my tech to be sleek… and while I expect both of them to look beautiful, the standards of beauty for tech and furniture aren’t necessarily the same. I don’t think the Samsung Serif got that, with its voluntarily large bezels. Abdelrahman Shaapan’s Flex OLED TV concept, however, takes the Serif TV’s ideology of merging tech with furniture, and amps it up in a way that actually makes the television look remarkable and desirable.

What Shaapan’s Flex OLED TV gets right off the bat is separating the television-unit visually from the furniture. The Flex OLED TV comes with a dazzlingly sleek bezel-less display that sits on top of the television’s ‘base-cabinet’ which resembles a table – the kind you’d place your TV on. After all, your TV should be surrounded by furniture – your TV shouldn’t BE furniture. With the Flex, that table forms a part of the TV, although visually distinct and separate… and it acts its base-support and housing its internal components like the built-in soundbar and the mechanism that gives the Flex OLED TV its most exciting feature!

As its name suggests, the Flex OLED TV possesses the ability to actually flex, going from a flat screen to a curved one with the push of a button. Complex mechanisms located within its base bend the display on command, turning it from a flat one to something immersive and more suited for a higher FOV – like games or movies. The curved display is much better suited for smaller viewing groups (2-3 people), while the flat view is great for large viewing parties like during sports events with 10-20 people. A simple button on a remote (or even a voice command) lets you instantly alternate between flat and curved views, while the built-in soundbar with 6 full-range audio drivers gives you an absolutely thunderous listening experience… all while ensuring that your TV looks incredibly sleek and future-forward!

Designer: Abdelrahman Shaapan

The folding iPhone may be more of a reality than concept, thanks to this YouTuber’s rough prototype

Posted on by

If there was one person on the planet I’d trust with hacking together a folding iPhone, it’s Scotty Allen. Based out of Shenzhen (and for a good reason), Scotty has a penchant for tinkering with electronics and we’ve even covered some of his exploits before, including building his iPhone entirely from scratch, and even adding a headphone jack to the iPhone 7 after Apple famously removed the beloved feature.

Of late, Scotty’s been obsessed by the idea of a folding iPhone, so much so that he decided to embark on the journey of making one. Now this video is by no means anything close to what Scotty’s gearing for (and he even talks about the obstacles against him), but it’s an introduction to this new journey he’s planning on taking, and he even has a resourceful hacker-friend who can help him realize this dream.

So what is the video about? In short, Scotty managed to get his hands on a flexible display that he hooked to a control board and subsequently to a Raspberry Pi 4. The Raspberry Pi was then instructed to mirror an iPhone’s screen, bringing the familiar home page to the flexible display. The flexible OLED doesn’t even have a digitizer module, which means it doesn’t register touch functions either. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as Scotty’s gotten, because it isn’t as simple as putting a flexible display on a rigid iPhone and calling it a folding device. Both pieces of hardware need to communicate seamlessly, and Scotty mentions how difficult that can be, given that the protocol MIPI (Mobile Industry Processor Interface) isn’t exactly accessible to everyone and that you really need to be a major player to get access to the documentation and the NDAs. Moreover, iOS itself is a closed-source operating system, which means building a device that’s iOS-compatible is another challenge altogether. However, Scotty seems determined… and as someone who’s literally built an entire iPhone from scratch by buying parts off the roads and markets of Shenzhen, he’s quite literally positioned to be the one guy who can beat Apple to the punch when it comes to building the first folding iPhone!

Video Credits: Scotty Allen

Breathtaking iPhone FOLD concept transforms from a regular smartphone into an iPad Mini

Posted on by

The internet is filled with rumors that Apple’s been working on a folding iPhone, and patents even show that Apple’s experimented with different layouts… but if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about Apple, they only debut products that fit perfectly into their ecosystem, and they spend years on product development in the pursuit of perfection; even though it can sometimes mean competitors beat them to the punch. With that being said, the iPhone Fold concept by Svyatoslav Alexandrov makes a compelling case for a folding smartphone. Here’s why.

From a strict ecosystem perspective, the iPhone Fold helps Apple develop one product that fits into two categories – the wildly popular smartphone category, and the sort-of dead mini-tablet category. With the iPhone Fold, Apple could easily discontinue the iPad Mini and focus on the higher-end, pro-grade tablet devices. The folding phone would then absorb the features of the iPad Mini, giving you a device that’s quite literally the best of both worlds.

The iPhone Fold concept designed by Svyatoslav Alexandrov (for the YouTube channel ConceptsiPhone) comes in the familiar Galaxy Fold format, with a primary 6.3-inch screen on the outside, and a larger, 8-inch folding screen on the inside. It ditches FaceID for the reliable TouchID, and turns the entire primary display into a fingerprint sensor – so you can unlock your phone simply by swiping up. The lack of FaceID means a significantly smaller notch with just one front-facing camera for selfies. The back, however, comes with the iPhone 12 Pro’s entire camera setup, featuring wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses, along with a flash and a LiDAR scanner. Open the iPhone up and it transforms into a squarish iPad Mini that’s designed to be perfectly portable. While the concept doesn’t say much about whether this device supports the Apple Pencil, I’d like to think it does, and designer Svyatoslav Alexandrov does mention that the concept is MagSafe capable and 5G ready, which already makes it a pretty good iPad replacement, all things considered.

Multiple sources say that Apple already is working on a folding phone and patents show that the company is researching hinge-details and even folding batteries. However, until folding phones really prove to be a smartphone category that’s here to stay, I suspect Apple’s experimentations will never really see the light of day. It’s fun though, to speculate how a folding iPhone can fit well into Apple’s ecosystem by reviving one product line (the iPhone), and retiring another (the iPad Mini)!

Designer: Svyatoslav Alexandrov for ConceptsiPhone

Xiaomi patents indicate they are working on a smartphone with a sliding display

Posted on by

It seems like flexible displays have finally found their place in the smartphone world. Folding phones haven’t been their best application (because folding screens leave a crease behind, and result in thicker phones), but sliding/rolling displays seem to be an interesting approach that allows phones to have larger screens in smaller, thinner bodies. LG, Oppo, and TCL have all indicated they’re working on smartphones with rollable scroll-inspired displays, and according to a new patent discovered by LetsGoDigital, Xiaomi seems to be working on a rollable display smartphone too.

The conceptual Xiaomi phone uses the sliding mechanism and flexible display to its advantage. The design comes with virtually no bezel on the front, and the display cascades off the base (like a waterfall), transitioning to the back and turning into a secondary display that works with the main camera. Upon command (either through a voice command or a tap on the screen), the front of the phone slides downwards and reveals the front-facing camera setup on the top. It includes the selfie camera, as well as an ambient light sensor, a distance sensor, and a dot projector. The receiver is also hidden behind the slider display.

This dual-screen dual-camera opens the Xiaomi slider concept up to quite a few use-cases. The larger screen on the front can be used for selfies, facial-unlock, and even video conferencing, while the smaller screen on the back can act as a viewfinder for more elaborate group photos, videos, etc. For visualization purposes, the sliding concept contains the quad-camera module from the Mi10 Pro.

Designer/Visualizer: Sarang Sheth in partnership with LetsGoDigital

This concept was first published on LetsGoDigital. Click here to view the original piece.