Overjoid

Just this week I posted about Project Glass, Google's wearable display for smartphones and called it revolutionary. Today I'll be using that word again. I don't use it a lot, it's just been that kind of week.

Meet the Samsung Galaxy Skin, the first phone in the world to be running Samsung's revolutionary new display technology.

As you can see from the image above, the phone seems to have a belt clip built into it - not the sturdiest or even nicest of form factors. However this is just one of the forms that this device can take and it's all due to the advances that Samsung have made in mobile displays. After an estimated billion US dollars over the past decade alone, Samsung have been at the forefront of many of the display technologies we all use today. Even the iPad's much talked about Retina display was designed and is manufactured by Samsung. Their main focus remains the OLED technology that they've spent so much money researching, and it is this technology that has finally been made into a working flexible display.

Of course, many of you may be wondering what the fuss about a flexible display is. The point is more who it comes from. As I've mentioned before, Samsung have heavily invested in display technology and are pretty-much the masters of it when it comes to hardware. They're also dead set on putting their own control scheme on top of any operating system in their phones, so while the Skin will be running stock Android, changing the form of the device into certain shapes will change the user interface to suit those shapes. Change it into a small sound system type shape and the music centre will open and fill that space while other shapes will allow for smartwatch functionality and alarm clock amongst other things.

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The thing to know about the Galaxy Skin is that it was a concept from a year or so ago, so not a true phone so to speak. So why am I showing you this stuff now? Well Samsung have finally mastered their flexible display (in other news, LG have mastered an e-ink display that is also flexible while drawing just as little power as other e-ink displays) and expect the first devices which use it to ship this year. As you can see in the following tech video, the display keeps working well even after multiple (admittedly quite light) taps from a mallet and then keeps displaying the video with no distortion as the display is bent and twisted by the user.

While I'm certain that many of the more esoteric features of the Galaxy Skin wont be making it into devices with this display, the future is certainly going to be a little more shatter proof than before. One thing to note is that every single manufacturer that is working on flexible displays has mentioned the need to wrap the display around a wrist as a watch and have the functionality change slightly when in that form factor.

So, how do you fancy your future - as a pair of glasses or as a watch?

I came across this new launcher the other day, that will soon be available on Android. I think it looks rather nice, and will be keeping an eye on its development a bit more closely from now on.

More info should be available directly from the ROU Team on XDA or Twitter.

Here are some dates to keep you going for now:

ROU Launcher Release Information:
Closed Beta Test: Late November
Market Release: Early/Mid December

I'm not really sold on the usefulness of this app, but it is kinda cool. Google have released an app that helps you create your own avatar in the style of Andy the Android.

Whilst my phone's being fixed, I'm gutted I can't try this out, but if you do, be sure to upload and post your results in the comments below!

I may even set up a gallery of Overjoid Member's Avatars! The app can be found here.