At Samsung’s second ever Analyst Day in Seoul some interesting predictions were made about the Korean giant’s near future. Most prevalent among them was that 4K smartphones would be coming in 2015, with 2K debuting next year in 2014.
The other big announcements were to do with foldable displays, which Samsung hopes to release next year pending manufacturing obstacles, and its own Samsung-manufactured 64-bit CPU for its next flagship, also coming in 2014.
There’s just… too many of them
We’ll probably regret this in a couple years’ time, but 4K screens really do sound like going a bit too far.
We’ve never really bought in to the idea that Apple’s 326ppi retina displays are the best that the human eye can discern, but at some point there has to be a pixel density past which the human eye simply can’t tell the difference.
The current generation of 5-inch 1080p displays boast 440 pixels per inch. There’s not an immediately obvious difference between a 326ppi Retina Display and one with 440ppi, but if you sit them next to each other you can definitely tell them apart.
Now Samsung plans to bump that 5 inch screen with 440ppi up to between 560 and 590ppi in 2014 with the release of 2K displays for smartphones. Fair enough, doubters said that 1080p would be indistinguishable from 720p and they were wrong, even if only slightly. It’s possible that some of us will actually be able to see the difference between 1080p and 2K with the naked eye.
Where we think things got a bit silly was Samsung’s further claim about 4K displays debuting about a year after 2K. On a 5-inch screen this would mean roughly 820 pixels per inch; almost doubling the current ppi of the Galaxy S4 or LG G2. This is the point where the display is wasting resources on a feature that no human can appreciate. It’s very cool, but it’s wasteful.
Still, it’d be a great marketing gimmick.
It’s worth mentioning that the 2015 deadline will probably mark Samsung’s unveiling of a prototype for bragging rights, rather than a consumer product.
Bendy’s not trendy, it’s defendy
A lot of the focus with bendable display panels focuses
around foldable or bendable devices, as if this were some kind of new
form-factor that manufacturers were clamoring for. It’s entirely possible that
we’ll see foldable devices in the future, but the real reason that bendy
screens are such an exciting prospect is durability.
A flexible display isn’t going to crack or shatter from sudden impact or stress. They’re also lighter, have amazing viewing angles and can do funky things like extending the screen around the sides of a device.
Whoever first figures out a cost-efficient way of making bendable display panels will corner the market with almost unbreakable displays. Of course, you still need a coating over said display, like Gorilla Glass or some other hit-taking material. But this material can now be a lot less rigid than has previously been necessary to keep the once-delicate display panels totally flat.
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