Following Samsung’s disastrous media introduction of the Galaxy Fold in early April, the company delayed the device’s late-April commercial introduction. Subsequently, AT&T cancelled its announced June 13 release date of the Fold, and on May 24 Best Buy cancelled all pre-orders. The problems include bulges at the fold, the intrusion of dust into the main display, and evaluators peeling off a crucial film believing it was a temporary screen protector.
As discussed by at least one speaker at the SID Display Week technical symposium, it is fiendishly difficult to build a multi-layer OLED display such that the stresses in each of the stacked layers is controlled simultaneously. The informal standard is that the display must fold for 200,000 cycles without noticeable degradation.
Clearly, the difficulties are not stopping major players from developing and, in a few cases, introducing foldable devices. One of the most most interesting announcements came from Lenovo, which said that in 2020 it would introduce a folding notebook PC in its X1 family. I asked a contact at LG Display if the display would be an RGB OLED (Samsung style) or a color-by-white OLED (LGD TV style). The answer was a very polite “I’m sorry but I can’t talk about that.”
i had somewhat better luck with Jeff Witt, Lenovo’s Director of Global Product PR. Jeff said, “Thank you for your inquiry. The LGD panel is a brand new technology and is not yet on the market (until next year), and we cannot provide any more details at this time. The only specifications I can share is that it is a folding OLED 2K display with 4:3 ratio, and is 13.3 inches in full screen size , and 9.6 inches in half-screen mode.”
Lenovo Product PR also said that the folding X1 would comply with the military specifications to which all computers in the X1 family are subjected, and that it would carry the same warranty. This could a more interesting concept than a folding phone, even one that lasts more than a week. I look forward to seeing it. (KW)
Ken Werner is Principal of Nutmeg Consultants, specializing in the display industry, manufacturing, technology, and applications, including mobile devices, automotive, and television. He consults for attorneys, investment analysts, and companies re-positioning themselves within the display industry or using displays in their products. He is the 2017 recipient of the Society for Information Display’s Lewis and Beatrice Winner Award. You can reach him at [email protected] or www.nutmegconsultants.com.
The evaluation unit of the Galaxy Fold issued to Dieter Bohn of The Verge developed this bulge after one day, caused by a foreign body that eventually fractured the display. (Photo: James Bareham, The Verge)
