Samsung may still be first with a bendable phone, as Huawei flips on the launch
Huawei reportedly tasked one of the world's largest display makers, the Chinese BOE, with delivering flexible OLED panels for its future bendable phone plans. It turns out that making OLED screens with the needed quality and sufficient quantity is not as easy a task as it sounds. BOE reportedly has 70% yield out of its OLED sheets, but if you count the ones that are produced with the quality Apple would demand, the yield actually drops to the single digits.
Thus, Apple may have to forego BOE as its third OLED panel supplier, as it has passed neither the quality, nor the mass production tests, while LG Display has now at least gone through the quality rounds, and will be trying to scale the production up. What does that have to do with Huawei?
Well, remember when the company was rumored to unveil the world's first bendable phones, probably ahead of Samsung even? The speculated November timeframe has now moved to "you will not even have to wait another year," so Huawei could very well release it next fall when it sees what Samsung does with its Galaxy F, or whatever it's called.
Thanks to the unsuccessful attempts to build OLED lines with enough quality yield, BOE is reportedly delaying its investments into the B11 plant that is meant for flexible panels which were supposed to go into Huawei's bendable phone. That's just one of many possible reasons Samsung may still be first on the block with a Gumby phone, after all, and we can't wait to see the $1500 wonder when it flips open.
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