LG has announced that it will start the mass-production for the "world's first flexible OLED [organic light-emitting diode] panel for smartphones", BBC reported.

The South Korean firm said that it had hoped to start selling the first set of cellphones to feature the first flexible OLED panels next year. This is similar to what Samsung announced recently.

Samsung announced that intended to launch its first product, which is the special edition of Galaxy Note 3 at the end of this month.

LG and Samsung already use the technology in order to offer curved OLED television sets. Even if the displays used in the television set are in theory "flexible", they are mounted in fixed shells so that the owner cannot re-shaped them or permit the panels from being bent.

A press release from LG's display division specified its phone screen would curve from top-to-bottom rather than side-to-side, the design which Samsung described in a recent patent.

The benefit of using this kind of technology? Well, the panel would be "bendable and unbreakable".

"The new display is vertically concave from top to bottom with a radius of 700mm [28in], opening up a world of design innovations in the smartphone market," LG added.

"What's more, it is also the world's lightest, weighing a mere 7.2g [0.25oz] even with a 6in screen, the largest among current smartphone OLED displays."

However, David McQueen, a mobile device expert at Informa, was not convinced that the product would have so much appeal. "I think LG is doing this to show it is innovative, to do something different and to stand out from the rest of the bar-style screen devices that we have at the moment," he added.

"But I don't think consumers are going to be that interested by a slightly curved design.

"However, we do think there will be interest if flexible screens are used to offer different form factors.

"For example a device that you snap round your wrist or a traditional shaped smartphone whose screen wraps around the sides onto a bit of the back so that the edges become touchscreen rather than hard buttons."