Your Smartphone Can’t Do This: LG Finally Shows Off a Flexing LG G Flex

For the casual onlookers, new smartphones with flexible displays–like LG’s G Flex and Samsung’s Galaxy Round–look similar to curved smartphones of yore, like the Galaxy Nexus and the Nexus S. However, a flexible display is different than just a curved phone, even if it’s permanently set into a fixed curve and is not meant to be bent or folded by the user, and LG is finally showing off the benefits of its G Flex.

In a new video, the phone is shown being pressed down into a flat tabletop surface to “unflex” the display and straighten out the 6-inch plastic OLED screen. Despite the amount of repeated force and tension applied in the video, embedded below for your viewing convenience, the phone withstands the torture and abuse.

https://youtu.be/LahYuSyWidc

This is clearly something you wouldn’t–or rather couldn’t and shouldn’t–do to your phone, especially if your phone’s glass display is already curved, such as that on the Galaxy S and Nexus S made by Samsung. Doing the same thing on those phones would likely result in cracked and fractured glass screens, and not a phone that self heals.

And even though flexible displays released on experimental smartphones like the G Flex and Galaxy Round aren’t malleable, the use of a plastic OLED flexible display offers a more resilient and durable phone that is less likely to break, crack, or fracture as a typical phone today would. This would make phones even more rugged to withstand normal day-to-day wear and tear as well as the occasional accidental drops and even more physical abuse.

Another benefit to the LG G Flex is that the plastic on the rear has a self-healing plastic material that could auto-repair itself if there are minor scratches or hairline cracks t the plastic on the rear casing. That, coupled with a more durable display, should make the LG G Flex a little bit more rugged.

Curved phones in the past, like the Samsung Nexus S, use a glass display over a slightly curved AMOLED display panel. This isn’t a fixed flexible display and these phones don’t offer the same benefits as the G Flex.