It’s about to drop: Phone that bends, stretch, & folds

Samsung are gearing up to produce flexible, unbreakable mobile phone screens that can be bent, twisted and even folded up and put in your wallet.

The South Korean tech giant reportedly has the flexible screens in the final stage of development and will be ready to ship them next year.

The breakthrough has been made through the use of organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs), which are thin and can be put on flexible material such as plastic or metal foil.

Samsung is the first to promise a launch date for the technology, with an unnamed source 'familiar with the situation' telling the Wall  Street Journal they will ship in the first half of 2013.

The company's move to produce the flexible displays comes as smartphone and tablet makers search for ways to differentiate their products in a market where customers face a glut of almost identical products.

Earlier this year, Apple filed a patent for 'electronic devices with flexible displays' that included features like on-screen keyboards that can be modified to handle concave or convex curves.