What it really takes to make a flexible phone (Smartphones Unlocked)

Had Dr. Dipak Chowdhury known just how accident-prone I really am, he never would have handed over the 0.1-millimeter sheet of glass for me to bend between my fingers.

Luckily for me, the vice president and director of Corning's Willow Glass division is a trusting soul and gave CNET the world's very first public demo of this glass so thin it can bend without breaking.

Flexible glass and flexible screens have been a hot topic for some time, culminating with fanfare at Samsung's demo of its curvy Youm OLED display at CES.

Companies like Samsung, Nokia, and even Apple have been working on flexible smartphone displays for a years, but for the first time, there's enough real research and development in this area to, perhaps, start getting excited.

Just think of what a bendable smartphone could do: curve with your body's movement so it sits more comfortably in a pocket; drop from a height and flex on impact, rather than shatter; pack into any number of compartments without having to triple-swath it in bubble wrap.

But don't get too frothed up yet. Willow Glass isn't the hearty Gorilla Glass 3, Samsung's Youm screens have nothing to attach to yet, and smartphones that sway in the breeze are still years out.

There's more that needs to go with the flow than just the display and its glass.

The problems with flexible glass

One of the biggest challenges with a flexible phone is getting the cover glass to bend -- and it's a common misconception that bendable glass is unbreakable.

Corning's Dr. Chowdhury stresses that Willow Glass was designed as a substrate material -- glass that belongs on the inside of a smartphone -- but in its current form, it isn't strong enough to serve as the tough barrier guarding the internal materials from the elements. It wasn't designed to be.