Comment by teekert
4 hours ago
Well, that aged differently, on different fronts...
All set aside, I did always wonder, why the screen has to fold (be flexible), surely a very thin line between 2 hard screens is very workable, perhaps it is even possible to make it (almost) invisible with some optical tricks at the touching edges.
Another point: It is easy to think of such things, it's the manufacturing and specifically manufacturing at scale that is the real work. That's why I think patents can really hold us back, by blocking the market from trying stuff because a company made some nice drawings (coming from a guy that was in a company that wanted to "blanket some markets" with patents). Perhaps we could have had our flying cars ;)
Btw, that last slide is very much like the communicator from Earth: Final Conflict [0], but then again, what can you make with a rolling screen?
The most insane flexible screen proposal from Nokia was the "nanotech" one - Nokia Morph [1], where the phone "normal" candybar shape was formed out of folding it twice with a clip for speakers - you would pull the clip and unfold it into something akin to A5 or A4 paper. Future sounded bright with software defined tactile buttons and the like.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-gTobCJHs
Looks amazing! And absolutely reminded of this scene from Silicon Valley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFsRif1wVGs