A Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg via Getty Images
Smartphones with displays able to repairing themselves could start appearing in the marketplace by 2028, according to analyst firm CCS Insight.
In its roundup of top tech predictions for 2024 and beyond, CCS Insight said that it expects smartphone makers to begin producing phones with “self-healing” displays inside five years. The way in which this might work is by incorporating a “nano coating” on the surface of the display that, if scratched, creates a recent material that reacts when exposed to air and fills within the imperfection.
“This is just not within the realms of science fiction, it will possibly be done,” Wood told CNBC on a call earlier this week. “I believe the most important challenge with that is setting expectations appropriately.”
Firms have been talking about smartphone display technology that could be self-repaired for several years now.
LG, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, was touting self-healing technology in its smartphones way back to 2013. The corporate released a smartphone called the G Flex which featured a vertically curved screen and a “self-healing” coating on the back cover. It didn’t explain how precisely the technology worked on the time.
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“There’s some recent technologies that folks are working on without delay that appears as if this might change into something that folks have one other go with. We’re not talking about smashed screens miraculously coming back. That is all just little cosmetic scratches,” Wood told CNBC.
Just a few other phone makers have touted self-healing materials in smartphones. In 2017, Motorola filed a patent for a screen comprised of a “shape memory polymer” which, when cracked, repairs itself. The thought is that, when heat is applied to the fabric, it heals over the cracks.
Meanwhile, Apple also previously secured a patent for a folding iPhone with a display cover that will fix itself when damaged.
Still, the technology is yet to be present in a commercially successful handset. And there are just a few barriers to launching such phones at a mass scale.
For one, corporations require plenty of investment in research and development to ensure they will discover recent innovations in smartphone screens. Money can be required to market and sell the phones in big volumes — and ensure consumers are literally properly informed about what level of injury within the phones could be fixed with none manual intervention.
Wood jokingly said he fears that tech tear-down enthusiasts like the favored YouTuber JerryRigsEverything will take a knife to test their self-healing capabilities. This, he says, is not the purpose of self-healing devices. Fairly, it’s about technology that could make minimal repairs to the surface of its own accord.
Phone makers are getting an increasing number of inventive when it comes to display technology. On the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Motorola released a rollable concept smartphone that extends vertically when pushed upward.
Samsung is pretty far along within the journey toward business smartphones with more advanced displays, with its folding Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Z Flip 5 phones now able to folding lots of of 1000’s of times over their lifetime.
HTC could exit VR market by 2026
Individually, CCS Insight also predicted that Taiwanese tech giant HTC will bow out of the virtual reality industry by 2026.
HTC was a pioneer within the smartphone market, answerable for several models which broke the mould when it comes to design, performance and functionality. The corporate’s HTC Hero, HTC Legend, HTC Desire and HTC One were amongst among the leading Android phones.
But in 2017, HTC kind of exited the smartphone market and sold its handset business to Google, which has since gone on to aggressively expand its drive into consumer hardware with its Pixel range of devices and Nest smart home products.
HTC has largely staked its future on the merging of virtual and physical worlds. In January, the corporate launched its Vive XR Elite device, a light-weight headset focused on gaming, fitness and productivity, at a $1,099 price point.
CCS Insight thinks that the firm will quit the VR space due to dwindling revenues and growing competition from Meta, Sony, and, more recently, Apple.
“HTC was one in every of the pioneers of VR, they’ve done so much there,” CCS Insight’s Wood said. “But they’ve type of struggled to compete, because they have not gone for the race to the underside on price, whereas Meta, with Quest, have been prepared to take very aggressive pricing — almost just above cost pricing — to drive adoption.”
HTC “may get somewhat little bit of an uptick with Apple coming into the space because it’s type of renewed interest within the category,” Wood continued. “But, ultimately, we predict it’s hard for them to stay in it. So we’re predicting that by 2026, they’ll exit the market, they usually’ll sell their IP [intellectual property] to among the other players who’re greater within the space.”
Apple takes control of second-hand market
CCS Insight also predicted that Apple will seek to gain more direct control over the second-hand smartphone market to avoid the growing popularity of second-hand devices denting sales of recent iPhones.
Apple may do that by encouraging customers to trade of their phones with the corporate directly, relatively than counting on third-party marketplaces like PCS Wireless; or by incentivizing carriers to give of their old phones to get credits to offset the price of shopping for a recent iPhone, the firm’s analysts said.
Apple could also start specializing in a “verified” system for grading refurbished iPhones, so as to encourage quality secondhand devices, according to CCS Insight — reinforcing the move within the technology industry toward more “circular” products that could be repaired and resold to avoid electronic waste.
CCS Insight estimates iPhone accounts for around 80% of the organized secondary smartphone market.