LG is halfway to making your display stretch double its size

There was a time when we’d look to LG for weird, wonderful, and exciting smartphones. The last flagship phone LG made before leaving the smartphone market in 2021 was one of those devices: the twisting-screen Wing. That hardware was unique and exciting in a way that smartphones hadn’t been for a while, and except for devices like the new Huawei Mate XT there really haven’t been that many exciting smartphones since. While LG doesn’t build smartphones anymore, it does manufacture smartphone components, and it just showcased something incredible — a stretchable display.

Screens that don’t just fold, but also stretch, have been in development for years. According to LG, this display is a marked improvement over its 2022 prototype, which could stretch to 20% bigger than its starting size. Compared to that, this new one can go a full 50% larger than its starting point and is expected to survive 10,000 stretches without durability concerns.

The prototype shown is a 12-inch display that can be pulled to an 18-inch screen. Possible use cases for flexible, durable displays like this include a convex automotive screen, or a wearable version that could be integrated into a firefighters uniform to show real-time information about the situation they’re in.

Back in 2021, LG showed off a rollable smartphone concept at CES and since then we’ve longed for a device like it to become a reality. Could a screen like this end up being used for a handset, too? A stretchable display might be ideal for a device like this, but it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

LG expects this screen to endure 10,000 stretches, and that might sound like a lot at first, but think about the sort of endurance numbers we see when looking at foldables. A Galaxy Z Fold 6 is expected to cope with an average of 100 folds a day for five years. That’s roughly 200,000 folds over a five year period. Aside from durability concerns, this prototype isn’t a screen you’d want to use on your smartphone. LG calls it a “high-resolution” display, but we’d disagree as it has a pixel density of just 100ppi (pixels per inch). To put that into perspective, the iPhone XR, which was often criticized for its low-resolution screen, had a pixel density of 326ppi.

This prototype is exactly that — a prototype — and it’s not something we’re likely to see in a consumer product anytime soon. Even so, it’s an amazing feat of engineering and could provide a glimpse of what we could expect in a few years as the technology improves. Progress is already being made and we look forward to what LG does next.