Japan Display will begin mass production of bendable LCDs next year

Screen supplier Japan Display will start mass production of a bendable LCD next year. The screen has been made bendable by replacing the glass in the screen with plastic, which is bendable by nature.

The flexible screens should not only find their way to smartphones, but also to laptops, Japan Display says. The plastic substrate sits on both sides of the liquid crystal layer to make the screen flexible. A plastic substrate is also what manufacturers such as LG and Samsung use to make OLED screens flexible.

The screen has been given the name Full Active Flex and the Japanese screen maker has shown a prototype. That is a smartphone screen with a diagonal of 5.5 “and a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels.

Until now, manufacturers have not used these kinds of screens to make smartphones that users can bend themselves. The manufacturer usually bends the screen in a factory and then places a curved plate of tempered glass over it. Samsung, LG and Huawei, among others, have used bendable screens in this way in smartphones.