Samsung Galaxy Note II screen may be “unbreakable”

The successor to the Galaxy Note (first edition pictured) will have a flexible display, but sadly this doesn’t mean it will roll up and fit in your pocket. Instead it will mean the screen is either unbreakable (if you’re a marketer) or nearly unbreakable (if you’re a lawyer.)

The Note II will have a 5.5 inch display, which would be pretty bulky with ordinary phone technology, particularly for something that’s designed to fit into a pocket. A South Korean tech newspaper is reporting it will use a plastic AMOLED flexible display to help solve that problem.

AMOLED stands for “active matrix organic light-emitting diode.” It uses the thin film transistor (TFT) technology from LCD monitors. The set up involves a layer of OLED pixels on top of a layer of TFTs, which effectively act as switches for each individual pixel. This gives a high refresh rate and the potential for a high resolution, but in a thin and flexible package.

Much of the long-term work on AMOLEDs has been based around extremely large flexible displays, with the Korea IT Times story noting it could eventually be used to allow businesses to use their office windows as teleconferencing screens, or for a car window to act as a navigation display.

More immediately, Samsung appears to be using the technology to produce a display that, although appearing flat to the user, is curved upwards on the underside. That will reduce the average width of the display by 0.4mm, which could be enough to allow a larger battery and thus extend the time between charges. The display should also mean the upper surface of the display is more resilient.

The Galaxy Note II looks set to be officially unveiled at the end of this month. There’s no word yet on whether Samsung will use the somewhat horrendous work “phablet” to describe it.