Sony has displayed what it calls the "Flex OLED" screen at the CES, a flexible OLED screen that might be used in portable devices of the future.

The display measures a few inches across and is capable of being bent slightly, even as the device is functioning, for example, as it plays a video. This is the first time that a flexible OLED display has made an appearance outside Sony's research labs. The technology is still nascent and has seen a lot of improvement since a similar screen that was demo-ed by Sony back in May 2007 in a video. Sony's screen was riddled with technical defects and issues - most of which have been corrected in this new display.

While there has been a dearth of OLED panels in this year's CES, mainly owing to the fact that they are still expensive to produce as compared to LCDs and plasma screens, companies do see a bright future for the OLED technology. OLED is competing with LED, another promising technology that is quite power efficient as compared to the technology used in existing plasma and LCD panels.

OLED technology is slowly making its way into devices with smaller displays, although it may take a while for it to be seen on large screen TVs and displays.