The South Korean company has a selection of screen tech heading to the event, but it’s the Stretchable display (the capital ‘S’ is LG’s conceit) that looks the most remarkable. It leverages the screen-stretching capabilities we’ve seen in its Rollable TVs and almost saw in its wackiest phone to reach the concept stage to turn screens into… well, lumps.

LG’s bump in the road

The utility of the screen makes logical sense. Hands-free, no-look driving control is easier than checking that you’re touching the correct part of a screen. The Stretchable display facilitates this, though it seems to do so at a touch command.

You do have to discard the idea of ‘buttons’ and ‘knobs’ as a better way of doing things to get it but it’s undoubtedly cool to see in action. A flexible screen with physical components underneath can morph into one of the raised sections you’re used to seeing in the central console that runs between the driver and passenger seats. It’ll deform up to 50% of its original shape while retaining a 100ppi resolution and without losing its RGB capabilities, says LG.

LG reckons the “screen can freely expand, allowing the display and buttons to merge seamlessly into a single screen. When the screen is touched, the previously flat display flexibly expands and protrudes touch buttons, making it easy to operate even while driving.”

There’s more coming to the screen conference from LG, but this is probably the coolest bit. How practical it would be as an optional extra in a BMW or Merc remains to be seen, since it complicates an already neatly solved problem. Slidable displays, presumably for watching movies while your car drives itself, and a 57in Pillar-to-Pillar automotive screen will also be exhibited at the event.

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Catchy background tune aside, what you’re looking at is Xiaomi head Lin Bin playing with an early version of a possible folding device — one that combines features of both phones and tablets. The device folds out for a larger screen, where it looks and functions like your average tablet. If you want to go smaller, the two sides fold backwards around the phone for a proper mobile phone form factor. Not counting the extra thickness, that is.

Bin said in a post to Chinese social media service Weibo that this device is still an “engineering machine”, meaning that it’s not ready for the production line yet. He also said that Xiaomi, in developing this sample, surmounted “…a series of technical problems such as flexible folding screen technology, four-wheel drive folding shaft technology, flexible cover technology, and MIUI adaptation” to create what you see in action here.

There’s nothing more specific on Xiaomi’s folding phone available but Mobile World Congress — that gathering of all things cellular and mobile — kicks off shortly. It’s likely we’ll learn a little more in Barcelona this February.

Source: Xiaomi (Weibo) via The Verge

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