Nokia and Samsung Racing To Bring Flexible And Bendable Smartphones To Market

Nokia and Samsung envision a world where your smartphone can bend and move like silly-putty. These two smartphone manufacturers already have prototypes on display as you can see and there are just a few move technological leaps that have to be made before the smartphone world meets a true game-changer.

The first issue that has been overcome with the flexible smartphones concerns the screen/display. Samsung has confirmed that it will begin mass manufacturing flexible OLED displays in 2012. Additionally, the company has been able to squeeze an AMOLED display into a clamshell form factor. Nokia believes it will be approximately within three years before it has a fully flexible smartphone in the hands of consumers.

So let's be clear so there's no confusion. Samsung intends to bring only flexible screens to its devices in 2012 and not necessarily have a completely bendable smartphone for the reasons detailed below.

Before Nokia and Samsung can bring you these novel smartphones they'll have to work out flexible batteries, circuit boards and casing of the device. The technology for the most part is already there and now it just comes down to getting all the components together and doing the required testing to ensure a great user experience.

For those of you who've dropped, broken or cracked your smartphone then you definitely are going to love this new flexible technology. Would this almost mean the death knell to cell phone insurance? Almost you may still need it if your device is lost, stolen or has liquid damage.

If this technology works here are some things you may be able to accomplish. How about squeezing the phone to answer a call or put the device on silent/mute. What about twisting the phone forward or backwards to control zoom?

There are definitely some great apps that will take advantage of smartphones that are flexible and bendable and this is something that will be groundbreaking. Let's just hope Nokia and Samsung don't bail on this project and the R&D works to bring this technology to everyone.