The US Patent and Trademark Office awarded Samsung with a new patent this week, one that has to do with a rollable display device, that relies on a flexible display panel. It can be rolled up for retraction into a housing. It’s a bit more complex than usual, so we detail it after the break.
The rollable thingie can be unrolled if you’re planning to use it in a flat config. This next gen display could offer consumers a compact form factor and a generous scrollable and rollable screen. The mechanics of the rollable screen are the focus of the patent and no wireless capability is mentioned here. This could end up as a tablet or a smartphone, nothing is sure right now.
A jig is mentioned as connected to one end of the flexible display panel and it’ll have an outer circumferential surface on which the flexible display will be rolled around. A handle is also connected to the other end of the flexible screen panel and a support unit is used between the handle and housing. I see there’s also an area used to hold/grab the device, much like a Lenovo Yoga tablet would have.
Such devices were usually seen in sci-fi movies in the cockpit of a starship or a thing like that. It all feels like a big scroll, but this concept has a tendency to break in real life. We’ll see…
