Samsung’s Galaxy Round has been dubbed a useless gimmick by many in the media but maybe we’re just not looking at the device the right way. DisplayMate president Raymond Soneira has written a lengthy analysis describing why the Galaxy Round’s curved display is much more important than many people think and concludes that “curved screens are a major and very important new display technology innovation, particularly for handheld smartphone.”
So what’s the point of Samsung’s curved display? Soneira says that, among other things, smartphones with curved displays feel more natural to hold and that they improve a display’s brightness while also greatly reducing the glare generated by ambient light. What’s more, Soneira thinks that the Galaxy Round is just the first step in a broader evolution of flexible smartphone displays that will deliver screens that “have a profound effect on the use of most display based products starting in the very near future.”
“Introducing a slightly curved cylindrically concave screen is a very important and major innovation in Smartphone display technology — very far from being a marketing gimmick as has been widely reported,” he writes. “The Galaxy Round screen curvature is very subtle, just 0.10 inches away from flat, which is similar to the slight curvature in a handheld magnifying mirror. But that small curvature is the key to a series of optical effects that result in significantly reducing interference from reflected ambient light by a large factor.”
