Semicondoctur Energy Laboratory is showing off a new 8.7 inch flexible display that can be folded into thirds.

We probably won’t actually see phones or tablets that you can fold up like a tri-fold wallet until batteries, motherboards, and cases also become flexible… but technology like this brings us one step closer to bendy gadgets.

tri-fold

Flexible displays are also harder to break than rigid screens, and they allow gadget makers to create devices like phones, tablets, watches, and wristbands with curved displays.

SEL showed off a 5.9 inch 3-fold display earlier this year. The new screen isn’t just larger (and higher-resolution), it’s also touch-sensitive which means it could be used in tablets or other touchscreen devices.

The screen is an 8.7 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel OLED display.

via OLED Display.net

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7 replies on “SEL unveils 8.7 inch 3-fold touchscreen display”

  1. Something like an expandable Lenovo Yoga 2 tablet with the screen wrapped around a big, 2 day battery would be pretty cool.

  3. My fantasy 20 years ago was to go to a store, buy a rolled up tube, take it home, unroll it and attach it to a wall, and voila! A hundred inch tv. Seems to be in the future!

  4. This could be huge in the future of computing convergence, simply unfold your smartphone’s display to get your tablet. plug it in and it’s your desktop. Shame there’s little chance of this happening (meaning being good enough to not want separate devices) within a decade.

    And you don’t need batteries, motherboards to be flexible, they can just stay in the same place.

  5. Brad, the batteries do not have to be flexible, since need to be attached to just one third of the screen.

  6. Battery can be separated into multiple cells with flexible connectors; ditto PCBs; case can be hinged trifold. The main issue I see is the display’s durability with repeated flexing. If it can’t handle bends in the hundreds of thousands iterations, general consumer use is probably out, but it may still fit vertical uses.

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