LG has announced that it will launch the world's first flexible OLED [organic light-emitting diode] panel for smartphones. The company has said that it hopes to launch the first smartphone featuring the technology next year. It made the claim as it announced it is about to start mass production of its own flexible screen technology.
LG's announcement throws down the gauntlet to Samsung. It emerged earlier that the company may be prepping a device based on its Youm flexible screen technology. It is expected to be a version of its recently announced Galaxy Note3 smartphone. Both of the companies already use the technology in their curved-screen televisions. In its press release, LG claimed that its screen would curve from top-to-bottom, rather than side-to-side. Samsung recently patented that method. It said that the benefit of bending the screen from top-to-bottom is that the panel was "bendable and unbreakable".
The new display is vertically concave from top to bottom with a radius of 700mm [28in], opening up a world of design innovations in the smartphone market" LG added. "What's more, it is also the world's lightest, weighing a mere 7.2g even with a six-inch screen, the largest among current smartphone OLED displays.
