Samsung Display Demos Long’s Rollable and Health-Sensing OLED

The Rollable Flex is an interesting new flexible screen from Samsung Display that can be unfolded from just 49mm to 254.4mm, more than five times its length. performance being shown on the annual Performance Week trade show in Los Angeles As with another Samsung panel, the company says the OLED offers fingerprint and blood pressure sensing right in the panel without the need for a separate module.

Aside from its maximum and minimum length, details on the Rollable Flex in Samsung Display’s press release are relatively slim, and it’s unclear what its overall size or resolution might be. The company says the panel unrolls on a “scroll-like O-shaped axis,” allowing it to “turn a difficult-to-carry oversized display into a portable form factor.”

Sensor OLED displays, meanwhile, look like they could have interesting implications for future smartphones. For starters, unlike the in-display fingerprint sensor used in most modern phones, the sensor can recognize a fingerprint on an OLED display “anywhere on the screen.” This would theoretically make it much faster and easier to unlock the phone using your fingerprint.

But perhaps more interesting is its ability to measure a person’s “heart rate, blood pressure and stress level” with their fingertips. The technology works by reading the OLED screen’s light as its reflection changes due to “the contraction and relaxation of blood vessels inside the finger”. Samsung Display’s press release notes that it works with one finger, but also mentions that this information must be read with two fingers simultaneously for more accurate blood pressure measurements taken in both arms.

All of this functionality is built directly into the OLED display itself, without the need for a separate module like most modern fingerprint sensors. It is unclear how accurate these readings can be, how long the process takes, or whether they can be taken at the same time as the fingerprint is being used for authentication. But the sensor OLED display opens up some interesting possibilities for future smartphones that may be able to offer health features not normally found on smartwatches.

Samsung Display doesn’t directly produce consumer devices, so it’s up to other companies or Samsung divisions to buy these screens and manufacture them into real-world products. But announcements like this are an interesting indication of the kind of devices that could be possible in the years to come.