Sony Demonstrates Flexible, Bendable OLED

Sadly, OLED technology was hard to find at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. At last year’s CES, Sony had demonstrated a 27-inch OLED television that was both unattainable and gorgeous. At this year’s show, however, all Sony displayed was a tiny, flexible OLED.

Sony’s flexible OLED screen was first shown on stage at Howard Stringer’s morning keynote, with his hand bending an OLED screen playing a Beyonce music video. He joked that it was the only chance one would get to squeeze Beyonce.

We checked out the OLED on the show floor for a closer look. Certainly on first impressions, the screen is definitely not one normally expects from OLED. Instead of gorgeous colors and contrast, the screen was low-resolution. Of course, the focus of the technology was on the flexible display, so quality wasn’t the point.

The display measured 2.5-inches diagonal with a 160 x 120 resolution, and just 0.2 mm thick at 1.5 grams. Sony boasted that the display had “great mechanical flexibility” with a bending radius of less than 2.5 cm.

The idea behind this technology isn’t for super-fantastic looking displays, but rather for more non-traditional applications such as an OLED bracelet. Whatever it’ll be, we can’t wait for OLED to become a relevant technology in the market.