How Is This Screen NOT BROKEN?!
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
1,180 words · ~5 min read
0:00
every year there's an army of new gadgets trying to capture your attention
0:04
with well varying degrees of success but
0:07
every so often we see something with a truly undeniable cool factor and devices
0:13
with foldable screens which appear to be just around the bend
0:18
might just be the next example of this but what sort of new school science
0:23
fiction makes foldable screens possible i mean from the time we were all
0:27
watching heavy tube tvs with rabbit ear antennas to now streaming on netflix on
0:33
our iphones we've always used rigid
0:36
displays well it turns out that a simple form of
0:40
foldable display tech was actually invented all the way back in 1974 when
0:44
disco of all things was first catching on that year a xerox employee developed the
0:50
gyrocon which was actually an early form of electronic paper similar to what
0:55
you'd find in today's e-readers like the amazon kindle now because it worked by
0:59
suspending ink containing particles in fluid it didn't need a rigid frame or a
1:05
backing instead the device just applied a voltage to each particle to get it to
1:10
show either black or white depending on what text was to be displayed
1:14
of course these days flexible displays with the low resolution of an e-ink
1:19
device aren't what most people are interested in rather the foldable
1:23
display tech we're all expecting to see in our smartphones in the near future is
1:26
going to be based around oleds now you can learn more about oleds here but the
1:31
important thing to know is that their chemical makeup allows them to produce
1:35
their own light meaning that they don't need a bulky backlight behind the color
1:40
layer this has made it possible for companies like lg to build shockingly
1:45
thin tvs but how do we go from a thin
1:48
but still rigid screen to a screen that you can fold or even roll up well as it
1:54
turns out the oleds themselves are only about one ten thousandth of a millimeter
2:00
thick that is a thousand times thinner than your average sheet of paper so it's not
2:04
that hard to fathom that you could fold them like a piece of paper
2:09
so while most current phones and tvs attach oleds to a piece of glass which
2:14
is obviously thicker and less foldable than paper
2:17
foldable displays instead use a layer of
2:20
bendable plastic to support the oleds
2:24
so then that's it you swap out your glass for plastic and bob's your uncle
2:28
you got a foldable display no i'm just kidding so of course it's not that simple i mean think about it if you were
2:32
to fold a piece of paper over and over again along the same crease it will
2:37
eventually weaken and break this is paper it's designed to be folded
2:42
this is not the kind of behavior you want out of an expensive smartphone so not
2:47
just any old thin piece of plastic is going to do the trick instead samsung
2:52
appears to be using a special glass plastic hybrid layer to give its
2:56
foldable phone a little more resiliency and strength and this is really cool
3:01
it's supposed to be stronger than gorilla glass but only about 50 microns
3:05
thick making it easy to fold another challenge though has been to incorporate
3:10
electronics other than the actual oleds
3:14
now it might not be difficult to picture a flexible printed circuit board i mean
3:18
you can get roll-up keyboards for 25 bucks on ebay but manufacturing a
3:23
touchscreen that can be folded is more of a novel problem as the layer that
3:28
responds to touch on traditional smartphones and tablets is rigid meaning
3:33
that manufacturers might have to turn to more exotic nanomaterials all of this
3:38
though is really cool but kind of raises the question
3:41
what even is the point of going to all this trouble just for a foldable screen
3:45
i mean aren't our typical you know hershey bar shaped phones serving us
3:49
just fine without another gimmick well one huge potential advantage of foldable
3:53
devices is that they'll be a lot harder to break either from accidental drops or
3:58
just even leaving them in your back pocket
4:01
and the Android team is already working on developer options that should allow
4:05
apps to take full advantage of foldable screens and change layouts or add
4:10
functionality on the fly as the user folds unfolds or refolds the display so
4:16
it could result in more flexibility
4:19
pun intended but it'll probably be a while before the
4:22
software fully realizes the potential of foldable phones and you also might be in
4:28
for a weight if you want a foldable gadget that you can actually afford
4:32
although the plastics that allow them to bend may ultimately prove cheaper for
4:37
phone companies than the glass that they're using today
4:40
manufacturing challenges and the ever-present early adopter tax mean that
4:45
you will probably have to fork over a lot of cash if you really want one at
4:49
the beginning if you're short on money though don't worry guys there's plenty of
4:54
cheaper conversation pieces that you can buy
5:01
here's a new year's resolution that's both fun and rewarding check out today's
5:05
sponsor brilliant brilliant helps you train your brain every day by providing
5:09
you with problems to solve each problem provides you with the context and the
5:14
framework that you need to tackle it so you can learn these concepts by applying
5:18
them and if you like the daily problem then there's lots more like it in the
5:22
quiz on the left so you can explore the concept in great detail and develop your
5:26
framework if you're confused and you need more guidance then join the
5:30
community and discuss these problems these thought-provoking challenges are
5:34
designed to lead you from curiosity to mastery just one day at a time so what
5:38
are you waiting for go to brilliant.org techquikie we're going to have that
5:42
linked below and finish your day a little smarter than you began it the
5:46
first 200 of you to do so you're the smartest ones of all because you're
5:50
going to get 20 off the annual subscription to view all the problems in
5:54
the archives at brilliant.org so thanks for watching guys like dislike check out
5:58
our other videos don't forget to leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a future fast as possible please leave a
6:03
comment we're completely out of ideas over here we have no idea what to do i mean what
6:07
was this video even about i can't even remember i i actually can't remember i
6:11
just hosted it oh right bendable screen spendable screens who thought of that
6:15
so leave a comment and then subscribe so that you can see your video come to life
6:20
on a screen that's rigid