New iPhones to adopt new OLED screen technology across Apple's line

Displays could be bendy and foldable in the future

General view of the Apple IPhone XR during the Covent Garden re-opening and iPhone XR launch at Apple store, Covent Garden (Getty)

Apple is planning to drop its existing screen technology across its iPhones, according to a new report.

As well as meaning the latest OLED displays will come all of its phones, the technology could allow for radical new designs in the iPhone. Future models could include bendy screens, for instance, or allow them to be controlled in entirely different ways.

The LCD display has been a fixture of the iPhone since it was first released in 2007. It has featured in just every model since, until the iPhone X arrived last year.

With the iPhone X – and the XS that followed it this year – Apple has switched to newer OLED displays that allowed the screen to go all the way across the front of the phone. But it has for now stayed limited to those models, with even the newest iPhone XR still using Apple's older LCD displays.

From 2020, the company is planning to move entirely to OLED displays in the iPhone, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.

That year is also expected to see a radical redesign of the phones. The new models expected to be released in September of this year are likely to keep much the same design as the current models, and so the LCD display is likely to stick around.

LCD displays have largely fallen out of favour in recent years because they use up more battery than rival OLED technology, which also allows for richer blacks. OLED displays can also be arranged into more unusual shapes, allowing for more radical changes in the phones' design.

The new rumour came from a Wall Street Journal report detailing the concerns at Japan Display, which is being hit not only by the dropping of LCD screens but also the relative lack of demand for the new iPhone XR, which uses its screens.