A woman looks at the screen of her mobile phone in front of an Apple logo outside its store in downtown Shanghai September 10, 2013.
A woman looks at the screen of her mobile phone in front of an Apple logo outside its store in downtown Shanghai September 10, 2013. Reuters

On its 2015 release date, the iPhone 6S or 7 will boast of a fully bendable display panel, which by 2017 can also be rolled and folded thanks to the new POLED panel technology that LG Display aims to perfect and mass produce soon.

LG Display, of course, prides itself as a major Apple supplier in manufacturing the iPhone and iPad.

In a new press release, the South Korean company provided the roadmap that the Plastic OLED technology or POLED will take in the next three years. POLED, LG Display said, will add premium to mobile devices due to its portability and durability.

"As Plastic OLED can be applied to curved displays that are bent to a certain curvature, it can be used in various ways, including electronic goods, such as mobile phones, monitors, and TV, as well as cars, wearable devices, and items for interior design," the Asian tech giant added.

Curved and flexible next iPhone

If the current Apple and LG partnership will continue, chances are the iPhone maker will soon introduce a model that sports a curved and flexible. Recall that renders of an iPhone with screen that overlaps to the edge or wraps around all the way to back plate have previously surfaced.

Also, Apple has the existing technology to support the use of bendable materials to its devices. Numerous Apple patents - approved and with pending applications - were also the subject of speculations in recent years that seem to reconcile with the introduction of POLED into the iOS device supply chain.

As LG itself asserts, device manufacturers would soon prefer POLED over the conventional glass panel because "Plastic OLED, which is film based, is flexible to be curved to a certain angle, and it does not break easily."

With POLED too, new device form-factors will gain traction with emphasis on light and slim profiles.

Next-gen iPhones that fold out into an iPad

One possibility that LG touts is a device screen that folds and rolls. For Apple, this leads to a radical mobile device engineering such a regular that when folded out will magically transform into a fully working tablet computer or an iPad variant.

The same is possible too with Android smartphone and slates.

LG is forecasting that by 2017 onwards, its POLED technology will pave the way for the large-scale production of mobile devices that come with foldable and rollable display panels.