LG uses a flexible OLED, or organic light emitting diode, display in its new smartphone, which is covered by a special kind of glass

NOVEMBER 5, 2013, 6:34 PM

LG Shows Off the Bend in Its Flex

By ERIC PFANNER

LG uses a flexible OLED, or organic light emitting diode, display in its new smartphone, which is covered by a special kind of glass.

SEOUL, South Korea — LG Electronics of South Korea took the wraps off its new curved smartphone, the G Flex, on Tuesday, showing off the device at a gathering of mostly Korean journalists at its headquarters here. It turns out the G Flex does live up to its name. At least, sort of. No, this is not the fully flexible handset that engineers and analysts have been promising for some time. It does not roll up into a scroll shape, wrap around your wrist or fold in half.But the G Flex does bend a bit. To prove the point, LG representatives encouraged a reporter to set the phone on a table with only the two ends touching the surface and to press down on the raised middle portion of the phone — with all his weight. Instead of shattering, the phone merely flattened out, then returned to its normal crescent shape.

A demonstration of the flexibility of the G Flex.

To make this possible, LG uses a flexible OLED, or organic light emitting diode, display that is covered by a special kind of bendy glass.

That is just one of several resilient characteristics of the new phone, which is scheduled to go on sale in South Korea next week.

The plastic back cover features a “self-healing” coating that erases minor scratches by itself.

It actually works. To demonstrate the feature, LG hooked up a special machine equipped with a wire brush to gouge the back of a G Flex. Within two minutes or so, the damage had disappeared.

How does it work? “It’s magic,” said Sungjin Lee, a manager in LG’s research and development arm.

Not quite. It’s actually a special kind of polymer film that is applied to the plastic. LG engineers decided that the phone needed such a treatment because of its bow shape. Unlike flat phones, the G Flex rocks as it sits on its back, making it more prone to scratching in the center.

Another new feature is the battery, which is curved to match the shape of the phone. The battery was developed by LG Chem, another company in the LG industrial group — demonstrating the technological advantages that South Korean technology companies like LG and Samsung Electronics can sometimes gain from being part of sprawling conglomerates.

Not everything about the G Flex is cutting edge. The screen is a 720-pixel display, falling short of the 1080 pixels in the full high-definition screens that have become the standard in many premium smartphones. The display is also huge, at six inches.

Still, LG has high hopes that the G Flex might be the forerunner of a new line of devices that could help it compete more effectively against Samsung and Apple, the two dominant smartphone providers. Introduction in the United States “is in the stars, though there is no date planned yet,” said Ken Hong, a spokesman.