Soon phones you can bend, fold and roll-up!

Wearable gadgets such as computer displays strapped to wrists and in wrap-around glasses have already made inroads into the market. But moving forward, a bigger revolution is in store as the next generation is lkely to see smartphones that can bend, fold, and roll up!

Once freed from today's relatively heavy, breakable, and fixed glass displays, tomorrow's devices may look very different, with screens that can be rolled out, attached to uneven surfaces, or even stretched, as reported in Reuters.

Screen technology and the global small display market is seen more than doubling to around $72 bn by 2016, according to DisplaySearch. The market is still dominated by liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which require a backlight and sit between 2 sheets of glass, making the screen a major contributor to the weight of a device, from laptops to tablets.

Corning, whose toughened Gorilla Glass became the screen of choice for many smartphones, will provide phones with curved glass edges as soon as this year. It is also now promoting Willow Glass, which can be as thin as a sheet of paper and is flexible enough to be wrapped around a device or structure. Initially, Willow will be used as a coating for products like solar panels, but it is eventually expected to create curved products.

LCD's dominance is already under threat from lighter Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) that don't need backlighting, are brighter, and offer a wider viewing angle and better colour contrast - and can be printed onto a few layers.

But there's still some way to go.
There is no shortage of prototypes - South Korea's Samsung Electronics this year showed off a display screen that extends from the side of a device - but obstacles remain: overcoming technical issues, figuring out how to mass produce parts cheaply, and coming up with devices compelling enough for gadget buyers.