Curved displays have the potential to solve outdoor viewing problems and improve smartphone battery life

Cuved smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Round shocked us with their sudden arrival a few weeks ago. However it was hard to see why should we use a curved phone, what is its raison d’etre. DisplayMate’s screen expert Raymond Soneira takes the Galaxy Round through its paces to explore its biggest benefit, a feature that is actually not a gimmick. So what is it?

The slight curvature of the screen might seem useless and we are also guilty of writing the feature off as a marketing gimmick, however that slight curve allegedly allows for tangible improvements in display performance. The biggest improvement happens when you view the display outdoors as it has much less reflection and is much more easier to read than a conventional flat screen.

This works by first cutting short the 180-degree angle of a flat panel and thus blocking a lot of the ambient light reflections and second by reducing mirror-like reflections.

Getting more in-depth, the explanation is that the curvature also blocks ambient light reflections and actually magnifies your face in the frame. Usually, ambient light reflections are what’s really bright and in the way out in the sun. Your face is usually the dimmer part and since it’s nearly 2x magnified there is less reflectance and the screen is easier to read. Interestingly, that magnification and ‘focus’ on your face starts to blur after 8 inches, and as one often holds a phone at a larger distance, the reflection from your face gets further dimmed and out of the way.

With a slightly more ‘matte’ texture, the concave display on the Galaxy Round brings huge improvements to outdoor legibility. Having better readability also means the screen can adjust to lower brightness and save hugely on battery.

These are two tangible benefits of a display curved like the one on the Galaxy Round. Now, what we’d want is actually a flexible phone that we could bend when outdoors and keep flat at other times, but that’s still way off. Here’s to dreaming.

source: DisplayMate