Doing some reading and have come across some patent reports from Microsoft. Apparently some patents show a phone that kind of, well, folds up. When folded, it looks like a normal phone. But open it up to stand it up, or reveal a keyboard... plenty of applications there.
Any thoughts?
Samsung and Microsoft co-developed the graphene OLED flexible screen technology. They both co-own the patent.
They made several prototypes, but the obstacle is production. Graphene is very expensive to make. A single screen would costs thousands. Until they come up with a new way to make graphene, for the screen, it won't be cheap enough to produce, sell and make profit.
When eventually they do, both Samsung and Microsoft will no doubt make products. And of course windows is the better tablet OS. The other advantage is graphene is basically indestructible.
There are of course issues with the other parts. Reducing the thickness of those parts will mean sacrificing battery, CPU etc. Its been hard enough to stuff things in phones this size.
Ideally the whole thing would go on graphene. And graphene circuits, and batteries have all been developed at a simple level. That would essentially be a single "perspex bit of paper", with your computer in it.
Some time away, the "tablet book", and 'scroll phone", even longer the "computer paper". Of course we have proto's of the former from I believe 2013 in samsungs and microsofts dual demo. But actually making graphene cheap - if and when it happens, it will have bigger impacts than merely computing. It can be used for nanomanufacturing, super materials, chemical manufacturer, cleaning, water de-salination and more.
My beat is 5-10 years before graphene manu comes down. At which point it will probably be an elite product for some years, like the mobile phone was in the 80s.