At first glance, it looks like a relic from the 1980s. A tiny computer screen with flickering, low-resolution text scrolling across it. But this could be the future.

The screen was made using perovskite light emitting diode (PeLED) technology. It is radically different from the LED technology used in your smartphone display today, and it could lead to thinner, cheaper devices with longer battery life.

Not only that, PeLEDs are very unusual in that they can absorb light as well as emit it, meaning you can use the same material to integrate touch, fingerprint, and ambient light-sensing capabilities, says Feng Gao at Linköping University in Sweden.

“This is difficult but we think it’s possible."

In today’s smartphones, such functions are carried out by electronic components separate from a phone’s screen.

In a paper published in April, Prof Gao and colleagues demonstrated their prototype with touch and ambient light sensitivity already working.

“It’s a very nice demonstration… it’s very new,” says Daniele Braga, head of sales and marketing for Fluxim, a technology research firm in Switzerland. He notes that optimizing all the different functions promised here might make it difficult to commercialize this kind of display quickly.