Samsung develops unbreakable ‘flexible display’

The days of dropping your phone and smashing the screen may soon be a thing of the past.  Samsung has revealed its ‘unbreakable smartphone panel’, a next-generation organic LED display that’s protected by a shatter-proof ‘substrate,’ or coating. The screen also features a ‘fortified plastic’ that means users can theoretically drop, throw or bend their […]

The days of dropping your phone and smashing the screen may soon be a thing of the past. 

Samsung has revealed its ‘unbreakable smartphone panel’, a next-generation organic LED display that’s protected by a shatter-proof ‘substrate,’ or coating.

The screen also features a ‘fortified plastic’ that means users can theoretically drop, throw or bend their phone without worrying about cracks. 

This differs from current flexible-display designs, which use a glass-covered window that ‘often breaks’ when dropped, according to Samsung. 

Other flexible displays on the market, such as those used in the Apple Watch, have glass covers on top of the flexible display. 

This means that if the device is dropped, the glass cover will shatter, which partially defeats the purpose of including an unbreakable display underneath, Engadget noted. 

To see whether or not the display is truly unbreakable, Samsung said it was tested by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), which conducts safety tests for the US Department of Labor. 

This involved dropping the display 26 times in a row from a height of four feet, as well as temperature tests that included a 71-degree environment and an environment that was -32 degrees. 

‘The Samsung unbreakable panel continued to function normally with no damage to its front, sides or edges,’ the Korean tech giant said in a release.