What if we could skip all the talk about smartphone screen repair and let our displays fix themselves? According to one group of analysts, that reality is just over the horizon. CCS Insight, a technology research firm based in the United Kingdom, shared Tuesday that major smartphone manufacturers are working to bring self-healing displays to market by 2028.
The firm’s forecast was just one of many in its Predictions for 2024 and Beyond booklet, published at the start of its three-day event of the same name. The firm said displays “capable of repairing minor scratches and dents on their own” could hit “smartphones and other consumer electronics” within the next five years.
The technology is admittedly in the early stages of development, but it can be done. In 2017, a group of engineers in Tokyo accidentally created a glass-like material capable of fixing its own fractures. Other scientists have been studying and producing self-healing components on purpose, from spacecraft hulls to pure metals. The consumer tech vertical has experimented with the idea before, albeit not very successfully: In 2013, LG released the G Flex, a curved smartphone with a self-healing coating on all sides. Motorola and Apple filed patents for similar technologies a few years later, but neither company developed a corresponding device.
The idea is that self-healing materials—phone screens included—would reduce the need for pricey, time-consuming repairs while keeping damaged parts out of landfills. But how does it work? CCS Insight says manufacturers would leverage “a special material in the display, which, when exposed to air, reacts and forms a new layer of material to fill an imperfection.” This is the same concept behind the other self-healing components we mentioned earlier, as well as Rome’s 2,000-year-old walls, which owe their lengthy existence to their ability to mend their own fractures.
That said, setting appropriate expectations over the next few years is essential. Self-healing displays are unlikely to perform the sort of fixes you’d otherwise go to a repair shop for; if your screen is smashed into bits, you’ll need a new one. CCS Insight also didn’t specify which manufacturers might first debut self-healing mobile devices, so there’s no telling whether your favorite smartphone line can repair its own scratches within the next few years.
