Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Magic Of The Scroll-Like Phone Which Wast Not!

When LG left the smartphone market, quite a number of strange devices were left behind. While some, like the Wing, made it to consumers, others did not. The strangest of these would have to be their rollable phone concept; a device which would expand by unrolling a portion of the screen like a scroll. This never made it to market, but one managed to make its way to [JerryRigEverything’s] workbench, and we are fortunate enough to see the insides of this strange device. 

There are a few interesting tidbits about the device before even entering the device. Very clearly this phone was ready to be sold, with a tidy user interface for expanding the display, and even animated wallpapers which expand with it. The display, when rolled onto the back of the device, sits behind a glass cover to keep it protected from debris, and can be used to take selfies with the larger sensors of the rear facing cameras. You can also see a bit of the track that the screen rolls on, hinting at what lies inside.

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Ask Hackaday: Why Don’t We Have Flexible Displays Yet?

A few times a month we receive extremely well crafted crowdfunding campaigns in our tip line that make us doubt our sense of reality. While this article therefore isn’t a hack, we felt it would be a good place to start a discussion around OLED flexible displays.

As the dedicated Wikipedia article states flexible displays have been around for a few years already. In 2013, the Samsung Galaxy Round was unveiled as the world’s first mobile phone with a 5.7″ flexible display. The phone (and the screen) were curved in shape but the phone itself was solid. The same goes for the recent Samsung Gear S smart watch.

Yet for only $350 in a $50k goal crowdfunding campaign the Portal flexible wearable smartphone seems to have all the answers. It is scratch & shatter proof, water-resistant, flexible, includes a ‘Portal proprietary flexible battery’, the ‘Fastest multi-core CPU’, gyro, compass, barometer, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, GPS…. Specifications are even subject to change to ensure the best available components… and it is 89% funded. As they mention,

building a smartphone or a tech company isn’t rocket science.

We also found a 70% funded €100k crowdfunding campaign for a watch bracelet (right click to translate) that will include GPS, Bluetooth, NFS (not a typo), a uSD card, a 4 lines LED screen and a battery for a few days autonomy… how surprising that no major manufacturer thought of that.

This leads us to the title of this post: why don’t we have truly flexible displays yet? We’ll let our readers discussion this point in the comments section below…