SID Display Week 2023 is taking place right now, and some of the biggest names in the display industry are showing off their latest products. Samsung Display is no stranger to this yearly event, and it unveiled several new technologies that could appear in future laptops, desktop monitors, televisions, and mobile devices.
One of the most intriguing concepts shown is what Samsung Display calls Rollable Flex. As its name implies, it comprises a flexible OLED panel that can unfold to make the screen larger. The Rollable Flex measures just 1.93 inches long when completely stowed in a scroll-like form factor. However, when fully unfurled, it expands to 10 inches. We’ve seen similar designs from companies like Lenovo, which showed a concept ThinkPad laptop with a rollable display in October 2022.
(Image credit: Samsung)
Keeping with the flexible theme, Samsung Display is developing Flex Hybrid and Slidable Flex Solo form factors. The latter expands a tablet’s 13-inch display to a more spacious 17 inches.
Of course, Samsung Display hasn’t forgotten about desktop users. It is looking to expand the availability of its QD-OLED technology to larger 49-inch monitors with a 32:9 aspect ratio. Quantum Dot technology improves OLED display performance by expanding the color gamut and increasing light output.
This technology ships in the 34-inch Samsung Odyssey OLED G8, Alienware AQ3434DWF, and Philips Evnia 34M2C8600. Those monitors all feature a 21:9 aspect ratio and a 3440 x 1440 resolution. The incoming 32:9 monitors will likely feature a 5120 x 1440 resolution and, like their 34-inch counterparts, are DisplayHDR 400 certified.
(Image credit: Samsung)
While the above products are geared towards a PC-centric audience, Samsung Display plans to bring a 240Hz smartphone panel to market. Of course, we’ve already seen gaming phones with 120Hz, 144Hz, and 165Hz displays, but 240Hz represents a new benchmark in this class. In addition, the Sensor OLED Display features both fingerprint and blood pressure sensors embedded directly into the display panel. Finally, there’s a new 77-inch QD-OLED TV for home theater enthusiasts with enough wall real estate to handle such a massive device.
We should note that while these are some intriguing, forward-looking products, there’s no guarantee that all of them will make it to shipping products anytime soon. For example, the 49-inch QD-OLED panel is a near-certainty for release in a reasonable amount of time, but something like the Rollable Flex is likely years away from appearing in a production device.
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Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.
