Saturday 26 December 2015

LG unveils its new flexible, paper-thin TV


LG has shown off its new bendable, paper-thin TV panels, and it’s got us looking forward to a future with no cords, TV cabinets, and rickety stands. The South Korean company revealed a new 18-inch panel at a press show last week, plus two smaller iterations - one version that’s entirely transparent, and another that can be rolled up like a newspaper to a radius of just 3 centimetres.
According to LG, their new organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are not only flexible enough to curve around the walls and corners of your home or office, they’re virtually impossible to break, and are thinner and lighter than any LCD screen currently on the market. You just need to attach a thin, magnetic base to your wall, and the ‘wallpaper’ screen can be placed on and peeled off at your leisure (see the video below).




So what’s the catch, I hear you ask? It could be the potential price tag - CNET reports that LG's 65-inch, 4k OLED TV costs about $9,000, and that’s without the paper-thin novelty - but that’s not even the least encouraging thing about it.According to AJC.com, it could be another five to 10 years before these wallpaper displays are made available, because LG still hasn’t quite figured out how to manufacture them properly. "LG said it has hit an 80 percent yield, meaning that 20 percent of manufactured televisions don't work," says AJC.com.
But don’t let go of your impossibly thin television dreams just yet. With the likes of Samsung, Nokia and Apple also well on their way to developing super-thin and flexible smartphone and tablet screens, good old-fashioned competition will likely steamroll this thing into our homes sooner rather than later.
LG Display continues to be the leading pioneer in flexible technology - debuting its new flexible TV panel at an event in Korea this week.
18 inches wide, the screen offers high definition viewing – but can be rolled up into a 3 cm radius without damage to the screen or technology.
The screen was made possible by its OLED, or organic light emitting diode, technology, which allows it to be lighter, thinner and more flexible than standard LCD screens.
At an event in Korea earlier this week, LG demonstrated its newest flexible display screens, which are 55 inches wide and paper-thin at 0.97 mm thick, and weigh just 1.9 kg – all the while still offering high definition. Attachable to surfaces via magnets, the new screen can be fitted to curved walls.

The benefits of this technology are that eventually, bendable TVs, tablets and smartphones will be much easier to transport and a lot less likely to sustain damage. Other companies such as Apple and Samsung have also been developing the technology – but although Apple offered up its most malleable iPhone yet in the form of the 6th generation smartphone, and Samsung previously promised flexible smartphones in 2015, neither have released any devices with the new fully-flexible technology.



No comments:

Post a Comment