Royole’s Stretch Screen is a great demo but it’s too early

After the flat screen and the foldable screen, here’s the stretch screen. The Chinese-American company Royole has revealed a prototype of a screen that can be extended and bent at will. An interesting innovation as it is limited today.

You might be familiar with Royole, the company that makes headlines every year with its foldable screens. If the name doesn’t ring the bell, you might remember his Louis Vuitton flexible screen bags introduced in 2019. Or that hat with an integrated screen. Or FlexPai, this smartphone was very recently received by the specialist press.

No nothing ? In fact, it’s hard to blame you. The innovations that Royole markets are rarely found in consumer products due to their often sloppy integration but despite their flaws, they still show little of the future ahead, and this year again, the company introduced An interesting innovation: the Chinese-American: the formable and expandable screen.

A product in the prototype stage

In a press release dated May 24, 2021The company has unveiled a screen that can extend up to 130% of its original size and curve up to a 40-degree angle. The result is a component that can bend at will and take 3D shapes as the manufacturer’s photos show.

« Stretch screens are the next frontier of technical progress and will allow uses to emerge in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, portable electronics, biomedical applications, vehicle design and beyond. Congratulations Dr. Bill Liu, CEO of Royole. In order not to spoil anything, these screens are able to become transparent and allow “to pass”. Up to 70% light Who beats them.

Royole explains that such a screen could be used to build more flexible watches and connecting bracelets or even a serviceable windshield Header width.

The Microlide To the rescue

This advance is actually made possible by the use of MicroLED technology (an evolution of the mini-LED standard that we saw arriving on the iPad Pro M1). Using this light-emitting technology (where each pixel produces its own light) made up of millions of microscopic diodes, it becomes easy to bend the screen without damaging it.

Simply put, it’s like trying to bend a plank of wood. By drilling the board into several parts, it is easy to shape to your liking. It’s the same for the Royole screen, but the wood grain is replaced by thousands of small LEDs spaced in a way that allows the screen to bend.

Soft screens have seen little success in recent years with the arrival of the Galaxy Fold and other Huawei Mate Xs, but their prices are still particularly high and no revolutionary use of this class of product has emerged so far. The technology may be efficient and available, but it is still expensive and underused.

If the concept of a configurable and stretchable screen is unlikely to arrive immediately, innovations in this area do not stop for the time being. With Samsung that recently presented a sliding screen prototype on a smartphone. A technology that was still science fiction a few years ago. Royole might not be the one who manages to enforce the stretch screen, but the brand would be able to say it was the first.

Continuation in the video