Originally posted on January 9, 2010 @ 12:22 am
I don’t know if this is a prototype for a future product or this is something Samsung did just for the heck of it, but they have a new 14-inch OLED laptop which has a transparent screen. I do have to give Samsung plus points for innovation. This may look like a totally impractical laptop to have, but you can’t fault them for not taking a risk.
To be fair though, since OLEDs don’t need a backlight and that would result in a much thinner screen. We’d get a more portable laptop than ever. I’m pretty sure that Samsung’s OLED laptop won’t necessarily be transparent or the transparency can be controlled. Transparent computer screens even have their uses.
That being said, Samsung claims to have created the world’s first transparent laptop. When the laptop is off, the screen’s transparency goes to forty percent – that’s way below than the industry standard’s below twenty-five percent.
However, I don’t think this would be an ideal laptop if you’re a traveller. Working with your laptop in an unfamiliar place where everyone is just looking at me isn’t really an experience I relish, and the paranoia of people peering into your work would definitely increase once people can actually see what you’re doing from behind the screen – not that there’s anything information-sensitive about writing a blog entry in WordPress, but still.
But the concept is pretty intriguing to me, and seeing how thin this laptop can get, I am pretty sure that this will be the future. Imagine lugging along a thin and lightweight 14-inch laptop. I’d kill for that. Make a non-transparent variant or let us play around with the transparency settings, Samsung, and I’m sold.