Picture this scenario: you’re walking around outside and it’s a beautiful day. You feel your new iPhone buzz in your pocket, indicating a new message, so you pull it out. Unfortunately, when you pull it out, you somehow manage to drop the iPhone 4S on a concrete sidewalk. Unless your iPhone 4S is sporting a good screen protector plus case, chances are your iPhone 4S display may be scratched or even broken. If Apple reportedly gets their way, this will become a problem of the past with the new iPhone. That’s because Apple may be working on a display for the iPhone 5 that is unbreakable.
This latest rumor comes straight from CultofMac, a fairly reputable/accurate Apple news site. They’re basing their information on what Samsung–a big supplier of displays for Apple’s iOS products–reportedly said this week. According to CultofMac, the OLED flexible displays have been developed by Samsung. And based on what Samsung’s Vice Chairman, Kwon Oh-hyun has been saying as of late, they’re in big demand.
Oh-hyun is quoted as telling the Korea Times that “we will be mass producing flexible OLED displays from the latter half of this year as the demand from our clients is significant.” As we mentioned, Apple is a major client of Samsung, despite their court battles. For a while now, Samsung has been mostly supplying the materials that Apple uses for their iPhone display. It’s expected that Samsung will also provide materials for the display on the new iPhone–so that makes what Oh-hyun mentioned even more interesting. Given the fact that we’ve been hearing a lot about a fall 2012 iPhone 5 release date lately, this quote would seem to imply that perhaps Apple is the big client with huge demands for the latter half of the year for the new iPhone?
By now you’re probably wondering, what is an OLED flexible display? Well, we’re not going to get into all of the technical details here, but we’ll give you a brief overview. Essentially, the OLED displays are made out of a special material that allows them to bend and even twist without fracturing when used on a smart phone like the new iPhone. What this means is that your new iPhone–if it comes with an OLED flexible display–would be able to withstand drops to concrete/other surfaces without the screen breaking.
It’s worth mentioning, of course, that Samsung did not officially confirm that Apple would indeed be using the OLED flexible display in the new iPhone. However, with all of the past complaints about cracked iPhone screens, it would certainly make sense for Apple to implement display in the iPhone 5.
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