New Samsung OLED tech could solve one of the last remaining issues with foldable displays
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 9 could have a major upgrade with this new OLED tech
Quick summary
Samsung has a new display structure that boosts performance in folding and curved displays.
The Wide View Display will ensure that image quality remains consistent across the panel, regardless of curves or folds.
Samsung has developed a new structure for OLED screens that will boost the quality of folding or curved displays.
The new tech increases the viewing angles for the OLED panel, meaning that brightness can be preserved when not viewing the screen head-on. That's a problem for folding screens or anything that curves, with the edges or areas around the fold traditionally losing brightness.
Samsung says that the brightness in these areas could drop about 60%, meaning the user sees a darker area. Anyone who has used a folding phone will have noticed this around the fold, where the slight ripple in the screen leads to a dimmer area.
The Wide View Display from Samsung Display is said to counter this, with Samsung completely redesigning the material and structure of the OLED. The aim is to ensure that the image quality is consistent, so even if there is a bump or curve in the display, the quality is maintained.
Presented at IMID 2026 in Busan, Korea, the new material was presented in a 7.6-inch size, exhibited on a folding device. There's every chance that this screen technology could make its way to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 9 Ultra in 2027 and also be used by other folding phone manufacturers.
Samsung itself refers to "next-generation form factor products such as foldable, slidable, and rollable displays".
A huge boost to screen quality
Using a wide view display could also improve the quality when a folding phone isn't flat. In the accompanying image showing the technology, the colours also look more vibrant and uniform across the whole screen, rather than just in the section that's 90-degrees to the viewer.
That could also boost the performance of curved displays, which could be more applicable to automotive screens, allowing higher performance when viewed from a wider range of angles by different people in the car.
Samsung's use of wide-angle viewing technologies became a hot topic in 2026 with the release of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra with its Privacy Display. The tech works by limiting the output to narrow angle subpixels, meaning the screen content is only visible to those looking straight at it.
When Privacy Display is switched off, the wider-angle pixels allow viewing from greater angles. That raises the question of whether Privacy Display would work effectively on a folding screen, given that the solution to dimming has been to increase the wide viewing tech in the panel.
