We have seen flexible displays that Samsung has been working on for some time now but without the flexible glass to go with it, now Corning has created the flexible glass calling it “Willow Glass”. Corning is the company behind our loved Gorilla Glass which may be the only glass that everyone with a mobile device truly knows by name.

It will support thinner backplanes and color filters for both organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and liquid crystal displays (LCD) in high performance, portable devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebook computers. This new, ultra-slim flexible glass will also help develop conformable (curved) displays for immersive viewing or mounting on non-flat surfaces.

This new glass is a slim strong material that will allow for flexible screens on devices which only Corning would be expected to release. This will also allow roll-to-roll processing making the entire process less expensive. In turn we hope that the savings are reflected in mobile devices costs.

“Displays become more pervasive each day and manufacturers strive to make both portable devices and larger displays thinner. Corning Willow Glass provides the substrate performance to maintain device quality in a thin and light form factor,” said Dr. Dipak Chowdhury, division vice president and Willow Glass program director. “Currently manufacturing in a sheet-to-sheet process, we expect Corning Willow Glass to eventually allow customers to switch to high throughput, efficient roll-to-roll processing, a long-awaited industry milestone.”

While Corning hasn’t gone into much detail about how flexible the glass really is we would be interested to see a demonstration. Based on the image above we can see that it is quite flexible with a 180 degree bend. As we get more information we will be sure to share.

Source: Business Wire

With Facebook and their highly volatile IPO there is pressure for them to start showing a profit for investors. Facebook having 5 mobile apps with no way to monitize being seen on the horizon and on top of serious bugs within their apps we aren’t sure why they are turning their focus to and actual Android device AGAIN! This is in fact the third time Facebook has tried to develop their own phone to try and rival Apple and Google and promise this device some time next year. The only way this will make sense it if Facebook can actually show a profit this time for the sake of investors.

According to the New York Times Facebook has hired a few former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the ipad and iphone to help this time. Since Facebook has all but reached its peak of user base at 700 million users worldwide they truly need something else to continue to show profits. Facebook does well on its browser platform although without any income from mobile users and more and more moving to mobile they are having a difficult time keeping up.

We have no information on the actual OS that Facebook would use although we lean towards Android for the simple fact that they can make it their own without developing an entirely new system or paying royalties. Based on speculation they will be taking a page from Amazon and their Kindle Fire.

There are many reasons why you would want your Android device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich but we have narrowed it down to the top 5. While many devices are getting the Android 4.0 update pushed to the device this year, if your not getting it you may want to upgrade. Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has been out for some time now and a selling feature for most new devices is the fact that they are running the newest Android OS. Below are the main 5 reasons that you will want and maybe even need Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on your Android device.

Android 4.0 Task Management:
The task management features alone in Android 4.0 ICS is a great reason to want the update as this is a weakness in most Android devices and the number one drain on battery life. Beside the home button in ICS there is a button that looks like two windows overlapping. When you click the button you will get a list of windows that will show you whats running. You can either swipe your finger across the ones you want to close to remove it from memory or tap something that you want to re-open. This is incredibly helpful when you are having an issue with an app being able to close it quickly and re-open it without having to go through settings to find it.

Android 4.0’s Camera App:
The stock camera app has been greatly improved from Android 2.3 to Ice Cream Sadnwich even though hardware may not change on the device. Your camera with Android 4.0 is almost instant without the horrible lag that you may get with your previous OS. You can keep tapping and taking pictures without waiting and having to actually get the perfect picture. Your Android 4.0 camera is as professional as you can get with a phone.

Android 4.0 Notifications:
While the notification system hasn’t changed much on the new Android OS it has been improved. Instead of having to go though notifications or clear them all you can swipe the ones away that you no longer need or want to show. You remove the risk of missing the X on devices that actually have it by swiping instead of tapping. This may not seem like a great improvement but once you use the new way of swiping you will love it and wonder how you got by without it in earlier versions of Android.

Android 4.0 Brings Unified Applications:
With previous versions of Android if you have a phone and a tablet you would need different versions of the same application for each device. Now you can have the same version running on both devices while still having them work well on both devices and in pretty much the same way. While the number of Android 4.0 applications are still low developers have moved their focus to the new OS and we are bound to see them increase in numbers very quickly.

Android 4.0 has Chrome Browser Support:
We have all wondered why Android being a Google powerhouse has never had the Chrome browser but now with Android 4.0 you can have it. The Chrome browser doesn’t come pre-installed although you can at least now install it if you want it and in fact we recommend it. While the stock Android browser seems to work very well Chrome is by far the best available right now with flawless multi-tabbed browsing. As with many other Android 4.0 features you can easily see all of the open tabs and swipe away all of the tabs that you no longer want open. We recommend downloading Chrome as soon as you get Android 4.0.

Again there are many improvements to the Android OS with Ice Cream Sandwich although those listed above are the most useful improvements in our opinion. There are also those features that we didn’t mention here that many of you may love like the Face unlock features and Android Beam although they are still being worked on as at release they seem a bit buggy. Let us know if we missed anything that you feel should be included in our list for the benefit of those reading this article.