LG’s rollable display is a crazy prototype from a still-distant future

Even though we’ve seen plenty of bending displays to date, LG’s rollable OLED prototype is incredibly exciting. It promises the kind of future where we can roll up the screen we use everyday and stick them safely in our bags or back pockets. But though the ambition is clearly there, actually using one might be a little further off than we’d hoped.

I got to test the new LG display here at CES. That really just amounted to testing a de-powered unit, while the real deal was kept under glass. I’ll admit that using a blank screen took some of the wonder out of the experience, but not completely. The display itself is paper thin, and the OLED panel feels good to the touch. The footage on the stationary display wasn’t terribly high-res at 810x1200, but seeing it on a screen that can fold like a piece of paper was enough to imagine myself in the future.

The trouble is the tech is still really delicate — so much so that I was told using the fully functional unit without supervision would mean I might break it. Oh well. Even if this kind of bendable panel is a ways off, it’s good to see we’re closer than ever.