The moment you’ve all been waiting for it here — possibly. LG Electronics has rolled out what it says is the first mobile device that can be bent out of shape or pressed flat onto a desk.
It’s a neat party trick, but LG along with that other flexi-phone frontrunner Samsung, will be carefully watching how consumers take these devices up before spending more to make them bend any further.
This week, LG Electronics launched what it’s calling the world’s first flexible smartphone, the six-inch, gently-curving G Flex. It went on sale in South Korea and will stay on the shelves for 10 days, with a not-so-gentle price of $940. If and when LG brings it to the U.S. in early 2014, a spokesman says the price with carrier contracts would be on par with other high-end smartphones. It goes on sale in Hong Kong on Dec. 13, and France in February 2014 with
LG representatives stopped by Forbes’s San Francisco office on Wednesday to give a demo of the G Flex, and show off its flexible qualities.
Actually, "flexible" is a subjective here. Place the curved phone face down on a level surface and you can press it flat. Try to bend each end with your fingers and it will give way somewhat. When I asked if the device could bend right the other way, LG spokesman Chaz Abbott managed, with some effort, to get it to give a little more.
The G Flex is the product of years of research and development, with LG and arch rival Samsung the big device makers rushing to be the first to bring a curved phone to market. There had been rumors in 2012 that such phones would hit shelves earlier than now, and there are various reasons why it’s taken this long. First, executives need to be confident these kinds of devices will actually sell. LG's CTO Skott Ahn told me earlier this year that it was hard to tell if consumers wanted phones with curved screens, never mind phones that were flexible.
Curved phones fit the face nicely when you’re talking, they bring the mic closer so that your voice sounds clear, and the curved display makes for a slightly more enjoyable movie-watching experience. Plus that pliability makes the G Flex a little more durable when it's dropped or knocked. It's an open question, though, whether LG's manufacturing efforts will pay off in sales, and they were big efforts.
“It took a while to get the manufacturing tools in place,” said Abbott, adding that LG had to buy and make its own machinery to manufacture the flexible phones.
Another challenge was in creating displays that can bend over and over. The G Flex contains a plastic OLED display, covered by a thin glass coating from
It has taken years for display manufacturers like LG to create an initial plastic OLED layer that won’t be porous enough to let oxygen and moisture in, according to Janice Mahon, vice president of tech commercialization at
Samsung’s own curved device, the Round, curves horizontally and is in a fixed position, making it an early step in the gradual evolution flexible devices. “We look at the whole flexible whole opportunity as being akin to learning to crawl, then walk, then learning to run a marathon,” said Universal Display’s Mahon. “The first flexible displays on the market will be put into a fixed, rigid embodiment, curved into a smartphone.” They’ll aim to be better on form factor and ergonomics. “Those are benefits at the first stage,” she said. Eventually the technology will become more robust and manufacturers can take small steps towards something more advanced, like a pen with a screen that rolls out. (See the concept image from Universal Display below.)
Mahon believes the world is three to five years away from something like this concept pen. In fact, a recent patent filing by Samsung shoes a very similar, pen-like device with a pull-out, flexible display. Mahon says researchers are currently looking at use cases for flexible displays in pens, wearable technology and even fabrics.
LG’s Ramchan Woo, head of the company’s mobile product planning division, said at a launch event for the G Flex on Tuesday that he saw smartphones moving towards “curved, bendable, foldable, and wearable” devices, but he didn't elaborate on how LG would further develop its flexible device technology.
Might LG bring out a smaller version of a bendable phone? “The engineers figure that the six-inch display is optimal for that curvature,” Abbott answered.
For now LG is targeting early adopters and people who like watching movies or playing games on their phones. “That content could be viewed more easily in an immersive display,” he added. The proof will be in unit sales, which is probably why LG is sitting tight, and not saying very much about where the G Flex might go from here.
Watch a video demo of the G Flex here:
