For as long as I can remember, Samsung has been demoing bendable OLED screens at various tradeshows. A video my old colleagues from IntoMobile uploaded in January 2011 (see below) is proof of that. Now the thing is, making a one off panel to parade around media outlets to demonstrate your superior technical prowess is easy. Setting up the factories that can mass produce said advanced technology is another thing altogether.

Which brings me to today’s news. At the Galaxy Note 3 launch event in South Korea today, Samsung officials declared that next month, in October, the company will announce a phone with a “curved display”. And that’s it. They didn’t mention how big it’ll be, whether it’ll run Android or Tizen, whether it’ll ship just in Korea or international markets, the price, basically nothing.

Why would you even want a phone with a curved display? You probably don’t, but you’ll want a phone that uses the technology that enables curved displays, because it has one other highly attractive characteristic: robustness. See, in order to make a bendy screen, you switch to a plastic substrate, not glass. Think of what happens when you drop a plastic cup versus a glass.

Which one survives the fall?