The metal ball dropped 40 centimeters onto a hair-thin flexible Samsung display with a resounding, cringeworthy clunk, but it did not break, and yet that wasn’t the most remarkable thing. It was that I was the one dropping the ball, using one of Samsung Display’s own pieces of testing equipment, and I was doing so inside Samsung Display headquarters, a place where no media has gone before.
I’d come to South Korea for a wide-ranging Samsung Electronics product briefing and tours of its massive Gumi Digital City Factory and this first-ever look inside Samsung Display. With Samsung Unpacked now just days away (July 22) and new foldables anticipated, the visit would prove more than illuminating.
Image 1 of 6
While obviously connected and working closely to deliver products like the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Z Flip 7 (and whatever comes next), they’re also separate, working in a partnership that also allows Samsung Display to supply displays to, for instance, Apple (more on those Apple folding phone rumors later).
Samsung Display is a display specialist operating in a vast and in some ways nondescript (and in other ways beautiful) factory that is just a stone’s throw away from its nearest competitor, LG Display, which works in South Korea with its partner LG Electronics in a similar fashion.
Most of Samsung Display’s buildings are unattractive, brutalist monoliths, but the interiors feature some eye-popping examples of their work. Ironically, we were initially greeted by a conference-hall-sized display featuring our names, which Samsung Display did not build. But on an adjacent wall was an animated edifice of phones, tablets, TVs, and other screens that all tell the story of Samsung Display technology, one that has taken it from tiny feature-phone displays and tube TVs to the vast OLED panels and flexible displays featured in the latest foldables.
Image 1 of 5
The ball-drop demo was part of a whistle-stop tour of Samsung Display’s latest innovations and stress tests. I only dropped the 21.7-gram ball on the panel after watching a Samsung Display tech do it multiple times from a height of 30 centimeters on a 220lb machine that Samsung Display had moved into this small room just for this one demonstration.
However, Samsung seemed in the mood to open up, and we were soon visiting multiple rooms where Samsung Display puts panels through the wringer.
Image 1 of 4
Following our guides, we hopped on a special elevator and soon were standing outside a 24-hour lab that’s running tests even when Samsung employees are asleep. “Only authorized technicians get in,” our guide warned us before unlocking the door with her ID and ushering us inside.
Many of these tests Samsung Display runs are designed to test “how long can I use it?” So, there are the folding and unfolding tests to the tune of thousands of times a day, and stress tests that heat the panels up to 60 degrees Celsius or cool them to minus 20 degrees Celsius. Many of the large gray or beige metal boxes where the tests are performed are sealed, so technicians must track the tests via video feeds from internal cameras.
Image 1 of 2
But as I learned while touring other Samsung facilities, the company likes to automate these processes, so it’s often an unemotional computer that will recognize and report a failure.
Our next stop was another few levels down (B5, to be precise) where we saw image quality and reflection testing. The latter was interesting because, as is often the case, Samsung Display built a special rig, this one a barium sulfate-coated contraption to shine ultra-bright light on the panel and then use a spectrometer to read the light refracted back. For foldable displays, they even check how light bounces off the crease, which will, of course, affect visibility of the crease.
Samsung Display is also where they’re unsurprisingly pushing the boundaries of display technology. Company execs showed us a series of displays that, I think, speak to the future of many of our display-worthy electronics.
Image 1 of 2
The first display, a visual trick of sorts, may have been my favorite. It looked like a small, bezel-less OLED screen showing off the inside of an ornate cathedral. However, when I got close and shifted my view to the left or right, I realized it was two displays sandwiched on top of each other; a small portion of the image was on the smaller display, and behind it was the complete image. Head-on, they seamlessly blend together.
Image 1 of 4
This optical illusion only works because Samsung Display has figured out how to reduce its tolerances so much that the small gap necessary for electrodes and encapsulation is almost zero, meaning that the top display has no visible black border around it.
Image 1 of 5
The other 7.2-inch displays were of the flexible variety. We saw screens flex, we saw them roll away, but the most interesting was the hybrid: a foldable and rollable screen, something that’s never been tried before.
As for when these displays might come to consumer devices, that’s hard to say, but it does seem inevitable. After all, I first saw Samsung flexible displays more than a decade ago, and now they’re part of a growing legion of consumer-grade foldable phones.
Display executive perspective
Later, we moved to another part of the vast facility for a sit-down with Samsung Display executives Byung Duk Yang, EVP & Core Component Technology Team; KyungJin Yoo, EVP & Head of Team Mobile Display Product Development Team; and Gina Suk, VP & Head of Communication Group.
Unquestionably, the bleeding edge of the work they do continues to be the foldable phone partnership with Samsung Electronics, where these innovations presented a series of unusual challenges, many of which the firm has overcome over seven generations of foldable devices (and whatever we expect to come next week at Samsung Unpacked).
“The two companies are always thinking about how we can continue to improve the usability of the foldable,” said Byung Duk Yang.
Yang talked about how these flexible devices and their folding screens introduced diverse user paradigms. Some of the work they do is figuring out how to handle challenges like drops, pressure, and collisions with heavy objects.
But it sounds like it’s been rewarding work and the company is undoubtedly committed to the foldable space. “The future of the foldable device is very promising,” said Byung Duk Yang. But when we asked about how soon some of those fold and slide screens might be in our hands, Samsung Display execs cautioned us, “We have to consider the real-world usage pattern. The display might be ready, but we should consider many aspects of the usage.
When we have confidence that we can deliver meaningful innovation to the user, then every other aspect of technology are ready, then we are going to list the product,” said Byung Duk Yang, who added that as an engineer, he knows they’re not ready.
We are exploring and we are thinking, when and how to implement the privacy display into foldable display.
Byung Duk Yang, Samsung Display EVP & Core Component Technology Team
When I asked, though, if there were any intrinsic barriers in folding displays to the introduction of the privacy display — a breakout feature for the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra — the answer surprised me.
“We are exploring and we are thinking, when and how to implement the privacy display into foldable display. Because we know many people love the feature. We are thinking, considering,” smiled Yang.
Speaking of innovation, the Samsung Display execs revealed that, with the upcoming new line of foldables, it’s introducing a new material, or rather, doubling the use of a material generally associated with strength and not flexibility: Titanium.
Samsung Displays described it as “Flex Titanium Technology,” and what it means is that upcoming foldable Galaxy phones, which the company will reveal next week, will feature not one but two titanium layers.
One is an update to the relatively rigid one that’s existed in previous Galaxy Fold models, with a new, special structure at the fold or crease to give flexibility and reduce crease visibility. The second, new, almost paper-like titanium alloy film replaces the polymer layer below the OLED in previous foldable devices and sits on top of the more rigid titanium plate. It’s both thinner than that old polymer layer and, Samsung claims, more resilient.
“Polymer layers are good for flexibility but [we] want to minimize permanent deformation; titanium alloy has a much better quality to reduce permanent deformation,” they explained.
To help us visualize the new flexible display construction, Samsung Display brought out a bread-box-sized diorama, with each display layer hanging inside like a curtain. The new titanium polymer layer felt smooth, thin, light, and quite strong.
Naturally, we had to ask about Apple’s rumored foldable phone, which may be called the iPhone Ultra, and how Samsung Display might supply the screen. They wouldn’t comment on the rumors but did share, “I think it’s more than welcome because when the other competitors and other companies join the market, this market will be standard and the owners will increase….We really welcome the big competitor joining this market…
We mean it, we love other companies to join this market.”
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vhYG3Qxo2UHYsCV9GSPzAM-1920-80.jpg
Source link
lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
