Samsung to Introduce Phones with Flexible Screens

By 2012, Samsung announced that they may be unleashing mobile devices with pliable screens. They are much like the flexible AMOLED displays we saw back in January's CES world consumer technology trade show.

Reports say that the line of devices will be made public sometime in early 2012. Samsung's own vice president of investor relations Robert Yi also says that after launching the flexible mobile devices, they will likely bring it to tablets and other devices as well.

Nokia, on the other hand, is introducing their Kinetic prototype, according to OLED-Info.com's sources. The Kinetic appears to sport a four-inch display screen that you can bend and twist to adjust to zooming in and out on images, among other display features. Along with these Asian electronics companies, LG Electronics also appears to be experimenting with flexible screens right now.

The technology itself comes from a screen with pixels emanating their own light rather than non-flex screens' using a backlight. In January this year, Samsung bought Liquivista, an acquisition that will allow the Korean company to develop these bendy screens.

Liquivista themselves manufacture electrowetting displays-basically display technology that is bright, low-power, flexible, and transparent. So, the technology is hardly new. It's just that it's being introduced to consumer products now.

Samsung's bendy screen mobile devices is also old news. Back in March, director of Samsung Mobile Display Yongsuk Choi allured to making these devices when he spoke of the company's upcoming plans. In 2008, we also saw a flexible e-reader from a brand called Plastic Logic. At the CES trade show in 2009, Sony also rolled out their first flexible display.

Most recently, Samsung smartphones have won out Apple's iPhones in terms of sales this third quarter. Strategy Analytics reported that the success mostly depend on Samsung's most popular Galaxy smartphones. Many factors could have affected Apple's iPhone sales in this same period.

Flexible screens have yet to hit the consumer market, but if and when they do, looks like it may be through a Samsung mobile device.