Future of Mobile Phone Screens.

FUTURE OF DISPLAY

There has been a huge leap in the way mobile phone screens over the last few decades. It has improved from basic monochrome texts to OLED screens. But, that is for now what does the near future hold for us in mobile phones screens.

The problem, as with any new technology, is getting it cheap enough to manufacture at scale at a cost that people are going to be happy with. 

Flexible phone screens

Perhaps the most well-known of the innovations heading to phone screens is the idea of a flexible display - one you can roll up and put in your pocket.These sort of screens have been talked about for years, and indeed Samsung has sold a smartphone with a curved display since back in 2014. 

However, these curved edges that are now a mainstay on the Galaxy series remain expensive and tricky to manufacture That's all well and good, but these screens are fixed to batteries and electronics that can't bend, so there's a way to go before we see a foldable phone. What we might see more of, this year and in the future, are curved screens and more original designs.

Micro-LED displays

Where micro-LED differ from OLED is in the makeup of their LED materials. The O in OLED stands for organic, and refers to the organic materials used in light producing part of the pixel stack. Micro-LED technology changes this to an inorganic Gallium Nitride (GaN) material, which is typically found in regular LED lighting. This switch also reduces the need for a polarizing and encapsulation layer, making panels thinner. As a result, Micro-LED components are tiny, hence the name, measuring less than 100 µm. That’s less than the width of a human hair.

 Another way of looking at this is that micro-LEDs are simply traditional LEDs shrunk down and placed into an array. 

                                                      Holographic Technology 

Holographic displays have been in development for a number of years, but manufacturers are still struggling to get the technology cheap and reliable enough for the mass market.Within the next few years it's very possible that phone displays will function both as traditional flat panes of glass and as 3D holographic projectors, with different modes used for different apps and purpose. 

With the right combination of cameras and miniature projectors, a holographic smartphone is very much possible today, at least as a prototype.

 

3D Touch Display  

Apple's 3D Touch technology push the boundaries of what can be done with a flat pane of glass and it looks likely that there's more to come: more sensitivity under the display and more in the way of integrated electronics underneath it, whether that's an iris scanner or a pressure-sensitive heart rate monitor.

Expect improved 3D Touch-style tech and haptic feedback too, so phone displays that are more sensitive to touch and can touch the user back as well. We're already seeing the early signs of this in phones and wearable and improvements will come along quickly.

  Verdict

To wrap up the whole topic, those are just some of the innovations on the way, but there are others in the pipeline, covering virtual reality, transparency and more. One day the smartphone displays we use now are going to seem very old-fashioned indeed.