LG's new OLED technology literally stretches the boundaries of display tech and promises to turn almost any surface into a screen—or should that be the other way round?

LG Display's Stretchable Display — (Image credit: LG)

Bendable, even foldable screens are already very much a thing. But what about stretchable? Yep, that's the next step in malleable OLED panel tech. LG has announced a new stretchable OLED panel designed for cars that promises to turn surfaces that used to be pepper with controls into displays.

According to LG, the new stretchable OLED panel can extend by up to 50% while maintaining a pixel density of 100 DPI. LG doesn't say what the panel's native pixel density is, but we assume it's higher than 100 DPI and reduces to that figure when stretched.

The argument is that touchscreens can't be used by feel alone, unlike physical controls, which means drivers have to take their eyes off the road. LG's new stretchable OLED tech could solve that problem by allowing the drive to choose which controls are used most frequently and then mapping those to a virtual button that extends from the display and can be felt without direct viewing.

If that's cars, this new display tech will surely be used in other applications. Bendable OLED displays like the Corsair Xeneon Flex are already a thing for the PC, even if we've yet to be terribly convinced by the idea thus far.

At first glance, if seems a bit niche on the context of PC gaming. Maybe you could have a secondary panel with the extendable tech that could be used to mimic the control panel for a vehicle, for instance.

Imagine a control panel on a door or, I dunno, a space ship flight deck, in a game scene. Maybe a rendition of that could suddenly appear in some form on the flexible display. No doubt someone will come up with a more compelling application for stretchable screen tech than that, but the possibilities seem pretty open ended. Watch this space, but we suspect stretchable displays with arrive on the PC in some form, eventually.

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Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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