On Wednesday, Samsung unveiled Galaxy
Round, a phone with a curved screen. The company is
calling it world's first phone with a curved screen, which
sounds impressive. But the Korean firm neither provided
details on how the curved screen would meaningfully
help users nor explained what its customers in future
can expect from phones that are not flat.
The reality is that even though the concept of curved
screens sounds impressive, it is not likely to alter the
user experience for smartphone users in any significant
way.
One thing that most people have missed in the hype is
that a curved screen doesn't mean a flexible screen.
The screen in Galaxy Round may have subtle curve, it is
still made of tough glass, which means it will not be
bendable or absorb shock to survive falls.
The curved glass screen will probably not enable new
form factors for smart devices unless companies find a
way to create curved batteries and flexible or curved
printed circuit boards.
Samsung has highlighted the user interface changes
that curved screen has enabled. On Wednesday Pranav
Mistry, who heads Think Tank Team and research
division at Samsung, tweeted that the Galaxy Round
"brings roll effect, gravity effect and new bounce UX
(user experience) in addition to an amazingly snug grip,
thanks to that curved form."
The roll effect is the slight movement that the curved
backcover on the Galaxy Round enables. This means
when this phone is kept on table, you can give the side
of device a gentle push to roll it towards you. The device
will register the movement and display the lockscreen,
along with any notification you may have.
This is in no way an improvement over the way current
generation of smartphones can display notifications. For
example, on LG G2 you can double tap the screen when
it is kept on a table to see the notifications. Even on
Galaxy phones, all you have to do is press the home
button for the same action. You don't have to pick up
the phone to wake up the screen.
The gravity effect allows users to move from home
screen to home screen with gestures. The bounce effect
can control apps like music player to skip to next or
previous song with a simple nudge to the left or the
right side of the device, even when the screen is locked.
These are not some unique features enabled by the
curved glass. These features rely on gyroscope and can
be implemented in smartphones with flat glass screen.
The Galaxy Round is not the next big thing. It is a proof
of concept device created to give Samsung bragging
right that it was first to market with a smartphone that
had curved display. Technically, even this claim is not
correct. The first smartphone with the curved glass was
Nexus S, which had a very subtle horizontal curve on its
screen. Though it was also made by Samsung so the
company can claim it was first to the market with a
curved smartphone.
Flexible displays could be the next big thing Curved
screens can have some unique uses but so far
smartphone or technology companies have failed to
demonstrate them. One use of a curved screen can be
to create a smartwatch that fits the wrist
ergonomically. For example this concept image of an
Apple Watch created by Esben Oxholm shows how the
device could be created using a curved glass screen.
Unfortunately, the problem with smart and thin devices
that have curved displays is that other components still
have the flat shape. Just hours after Samsung unveiled
LG announced that it had started producing flexible
batteries. While this will undoubtedly help, engineers
and designers will have to come up with imaginative
ways to use these technologies in meaningful manner
before they can provide an improvement over the current
devices. Flexible displays are more promising. Both
Samsung and LG have shown samples of high-
resolution flexible displays.
Samsung even created a fully-working smartphone with
flexible display and showed it during Consumer
Electronic Show earlier in January. This smartphone had
the display gracefully melding into the back cover. At
that time Samsung did specify how it could use the
extra display space in the prototype but suggested that
the sides of the device could be used as notification
centre. So far, we have yet to see any such display in
an actual device.
But even in the case of flexible displays, the actual
benefits are yet to be demonstrated. In the concepts
and artworks by several companies, including Samsung,
magazine like devices that can rolled or folded have
been shown. But that kind of future so far only exist in
labs and artistic concepts.