The Future of Smartphones – Give Me Strength

Smartphones are vulnerable things. Because they’re small, desirable and fragile, they’re prone to being stolen, lost or broken. And that doesn’t come cheap, with top-end smartphones weighing in at several hundred pounds for the latest model. Whilst there is not much we can do to make them any less susceptible to being lost (and the manufacturers certainly don’t want to make them any less desirable), there is currently research being carried out that could make them a great deal less vulnerable to damage.

One of the most common ways to render a smartphone not quite as smart as it was previously is to drop it. Because of the use of glass screens, even a fall from a relatively low height can crack or shatter the screen. Once that happens, you’re left with nothing more than a very expensive and very broken collection of electronic components. But what if manufacturers moved away from the use of glass as their primary screen component?

 

Image Courtesy of Stuart Miles /FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The answer – flexible plastic technology

That is precisely what companies such as Plastic Logic are currently looking at – through the use of plastic electronic display technology. Their idea is to produce lighter, more flexible and more robust screens by moving away from the use of glass and incorporating groundbreaking developments in E-ink frontplanes combined with active matrix backplanes – on flexible plastic.

What that means in simple terms is that you have all the features of a standard touchscreen, with the flexibility and, most importantly, the robustness of a material that isn’t brittle or prone to breaking. In fact, the flexible plastic technology currently being developed is so flexible that it can be bent and twisted without any adverse effect to the product’s operation.

Colour screens on the horizon

Currently, the use of monochrome E-ink and colour filters is producing an acceptable but perhaps slightly muted colour palette. The frame rate is also not yet fast enough to be used for devices such as iPhones. However, the speed at which companies such as Plastic Logic are innovating and developing means that a full colour screen is not far off. CEO of Plastic Logic Indro Mukerjee has commented that: “Plastic Logic’s development of a colour flexible plastic display is particularly significant, since the same process could enable unbreakable, flexible display solutions with other media such as LCD and OLED.”

Stronger and lighter

With our dependence on our phones an intrinsic part of modern life, anything that makes those little boxes of electronics more robust and less susceptible to breaking has to be welcomed. But there could be other advantages to using flexible plastic electronic display screens in mobile phones; not least in terms of weight reduction. The use of a flexible plastic display screen could knock grams off the average smartphone. That may not sound like a big deal, but weight is a big USP with manufacturers, and customers put a lot of store in how much a phone weighs. We like them light, and the use of plastic display screens that are a fraction of the thickness of an ordinary glass screen could make a big difference.

But the biggest advantage will be, without doubt, a vast improvement in the robustness of our precious gadgets. And in an age were we’re actually looking for products that will last longer, rather than the throw-away society of previous decades, that has to be a big advantage for us, and the planet.