Samsung bleats 'bout bendy blowers for 2012

Samsung has announced it will introduce flexible mobile phones next year, with the prospect of bendy tablets and other tech close behind. During a company financial results conference, Samsung's investor relations chief Robert Yi said: "The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier …

[Anonymous Coward]

Bendy phones

Sounds like a great idea if you put your phone in your back pocket - being more robust is always good.

I'm not so sure about flexing it as a means of input though. I'll await the first wobble-board app.

[Craigness]

Get me a patent lawyer!

I'm going to patent every conceivable way of interacting with a bendy screen so that everyone else who conceives the same will have to pay me mucho dollaro.

[Si 1]

How many years now have bendable/foldable displays been imminent?

Companies have been promising these sorts of screens for years now, so it's hard not to be a but jaded about yet another claim they're nearly here. Still, very cool if it's true.

[Mondo the Magnificent]

Bendy tablets...

Just what Rolf Harris needs to step into the digital era..

"Tie me fondleslab down sport, tie me fondleslab down... altogether now..."

[xj25vm]

What about the PCB?

I understand the bit about this new bendy screen technology (well, I don't understand it really, I just accept it :-) ) - but what happens to the electronic bits behind it. The rule was, for years, that any motherboard that you bend at all risks delaminating the layers inside and becoming useless. Is there a bendy PCB technology behind the screen as well?

[Pinky]

OK, so we can bend the screen ...

... but what about the rest of the hardware? Although flexible PCBs have been around for many years, I have yet to see a flexible IC, and certainly not a BGA (which is pretty much essential if you want to keep the size down).

[Bassey]

RE: What about the rest

I may be wrong (it happened once before) but I reckon they are talking more along the lines of that Sony phone with a split screen that folds in half down the middle. Imagine that but without the annoying strip down the middle where the hinge is. That way, the screen bends but the rest of the electronics can remain usefully solid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa there sport.

I think you'll find a certain fruit company has patented the concept of a human being communicating with another human being via any kind of inanimate object both with and without the use of text.

Further said company has also patented the use of oxygen by animate objects and the concept of sustaining any kind of verticality in a gravitational field.

Said gravitational field being also subect to fruity patent.

Additionall said Fruit company has patented the notion of patents and as a result owns the entire universe. Please leave this universe at your earliest convenience.