Apple may be working on foldable OLED iPhone, with the aim of getting it ready by 2020, thanks to a rumoured partnership with LG.
Or at least that’s according to Korean news site The Bell, which citing industry sources reports that Apple has started working with LG Display – the Korean company’s screen making division – to create a foldable iPhone.
LG Display has apparently set up a task force to develop the flexible OLED display tech, while its sister firm LG Innotek has formed a team to develop a flexible printed circuit board to hold the iPhone’s electronic internals.
If these rumours and sources are to believed, it would mean iPhones in the near-future would not be reliant on OLED displays from leading supplier Samsung Display. While LG has been making progress with the development of flexible displays over the past few years, a partnership with the company would see Apple shift from parting with huge amounts of cash to buy displays from Samsung, one of its main rivals in the smartphone world.
Samsung currently has a monopoly on OLED displays for smartphones, so if Apple were to stop buying its display for the iPhone X, then Samsung could see a large dent in its customer base. But Samsung has also been working on foldable displays, so if it makes any significant developments in the near future it could potentially attract back Apple, if indeed Cupertino is planning on ditching Samsung displays.
However, this is all speculation based on rumours, and despite some of the developments with foldable displays and other tech, such as 3D displays in phones, even the more innovative mobiles like the Galaxy S8 with its Infinity Display and the machine-learning loaded Google Pixel 2, still retain very familiar rigid handset designs.
So perhaps 2020 is a little ambitious to expect a bevy of flexible mobiles to crop up, particularly as such new tech often requires new standards to ensure apps and software work nicely with unusual displays? Take HDR, for example, which has two competing standards, meaning the mobiles that have adopted the tech end up with different ways to display high dynamic range content. All of which is a tad confusing for consumers.
Then again, every year is the year we’re finally going to see the foldable Samsung Galaxy X…
Related: What is HDR?
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
