Samsung Display has long been a pioneer when it comes to creative display concepts, but at CES 2025, it showed off a prototype that just might be mind-boggling enough to steal the show. Imagine you’re watching a movie in 3D, but instead of needing glasses for the depth effect, the display can actually pop out toward you — that’s the kind of future I caught a glimpse of with what’s currently being called Stretchable MicroLED.
Stretchable MicroLED is mostly what it sounds like, but whatever you’re picturing, make it like 5 times more miniature. The demo consisted of a screen no larger than 6 inches bulging out from an eye-level height hole in a wall. It cycled through aerial footage of the famous Las Vegas Sphere (apt of course, given the location of CES), with the screen curving outward along the venue’s outline.
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The screen effortlessly cycled between flat and protruding several times, acting as a proof of concept for a larger MicroLED device in the future such as a phone, tablet or most practically, a TV. Of course, something like this could also be further developed for commercial purposes, though it’s never out of the question that it could fade into oblivion, either. It's kind of hard to imagine many practical uses for something like this, after all.
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So if oblivion does end up being the final destination for this stretchable display, I’m still glad I had the chance to see it up-close while Samsung Display had it out. There was something oddly soothing about staring at the screen as it moved, as though there was a person behind the wall pushing it outwardsand reigning it back in perfect rhythm.
The display looked most effective standing 90-degrees off-angle in its minuscule size, though I’m sure it’d have a greater impact from a front-on view if it were on, say, a 65-inch screen. There goes the 3D industry as we know it, I guess.
