Samsung has introduced a screen that is said to be unbreakable. The OLED screen has now been extensively tested and approved by an official US body.
Samsung Display had the new screen, presented last Thursday, tested by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), an official testing company for OSHA, the US Department of Labour's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The company used military-standard methods to evaluate the device. Among other things, it dropped the display 26 times from a height of more than one metre. It was also exposed to extreme temperatures (-32 and 71 degrees). In all cases, the display remained intact.
OLED
The display consists of a flexible OLED screen complemented by an 'unbreakable' substrate. In addition, the screen has a plastic overlay to provide extra protection. This is completely different from existing flexible displays, whose window is covered with glass and can shatter with high impact.
"The reinforced plastic window is especially suitable for portable electronic devices, not only because of its unbreakable properties, but also because of its light weight, permeability and hardness, which are all very similar to glass," said Hojung Kim, Samsung's general manager in a press release.
Samsung published a video on YouTube earlier this week showing the 'unbreakable' plastic panel in action, in which a person compares the screen in the plastic window to alternatives that use both flexible substrates and conventional glass. The durable panel is then hit repeatedly with a hammer and shows no damage in the process.
To raise the bar a little, the screen was also lowered several times from a height of 1.80 metres, significantly higher than the US military standard. In that too, the screen remained intact and working on both the side and front.
Gorilla Glass
The unbreakable display could become competition to US technology company Corning's so-called Gorilla Glass, which has been increasingly used in smartphones over the years and is widely considered the market leader in screen protection technology. But if Samsung's display is as good as that of Samsung and UL, it could be a real competitor, experts say.
It is not clear when the screens will actually go into production. Samsung did announce its intention to also apply the foldable and unbreakable screen to electronic devices in areas such as the automotive, defence and education industries.
Source: Samsung/Tom's Guide
