CES: LG Demos 17-Inch OLED, 8-Inch 360-Degree Foldables

LG Display showcased several prototypes at CES 2023. As part of its Advanced Mobility Lifestyle exhibit, the South Korean company touted an 8-inch, 360-degree foldable OLED that could be used for future smartphones or autos. The revolutionary technology “enables a device to fold both ways to bring greater utilization, as users can now choose different form factors according to their task,” says LG, attesting to its durability “even when folded more than 200,000 times, while its special folding mechanism minimizes wrinkles along the folding areas.” The company also presented a 17-inch foldable OLED that is “almost entirely crease-free.”

Tom’s Guide confirmed that “upon close inspection, it was actually quite difficult to make out the seam with the panel full open, which is pretty impressive,” noting “400 nits of brightness and a resolution of 2,560 x 1,920 pixel” and support for “99.5 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut.”

The foldable OLED “optimizes a laptop’s utilization in various environments since it can fold and unfold in half to transform into a tablet or portable monitor,” according to LG, which explains that the touchscreen-capable surface can be activated using a stylus or finger. Pointing out that LG supplies solutions to third-party manufacturers, Tom’s Guide even flagged “a 0.4-inch OLED panel that will likely find a home in VR or mixed reality headsets.”

As for the 360-degree foldable, “the gist is that this 8-inch panel can fold both ways, giving users more flexibility in terms of how they use a mobile device,” Tom’s reports, noting “LG showed what the interface might look like on a foldable phone with this type of panel, with your calendar and widgets on the left and the Spotify music player on the right, and the middle portion of the screen has a quick launcher bar for your favorite apps.”

Engadget compared it to Samsung’s Galaxy Fold, except that with LG’s case, “in addition to folding it closed, you can also fold it outwards, with the two displays in a sort of tent shape.”

LG also previewed a 27-inch concept called the OLED Glow that features touch technology and is both height and angle adjustable. “File this under weird but intriguing,” writes Tom’s, describing a demo in which “the Glow was displaying a live fireplace view and then the panel got raised up and flipped out to the right (almost like a flag) to show a collection of e-books you could scroll through with a finger.”

Also on display was LG’s third-generation OLED TV Panel, which was up to 60 percent brighter and offered 30 percent wider viewing angles than the previous iteration. The brightness is achieved via LG Display’s new Meta Technology, which “leverages an array of micro lenses that maximizes light emission from the OLED panel and a Meta Booster brightness-enhancing algorithm,” writes Tom’s, concluding the resultant 2,100-nit brightness rating “would be the highest in industry.”

Meta tech “is coming to 55-, 65- and 77-inch 4K OLED panels and 77- and 88-inch 8K OLED TVs,” according to Tom’s.

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