> The material having more flex than glass or plexiglas gives it more impact resistance, so maybe there the phone screen use-case is plausible

I'm not sure I buy that, there's lots of materials that are more transparent than this "transparent" wood that can flex. Polycarbonate is a great example of this. So transparent we make most of our eye glasses out of it, durable and impact resistant we call water bottles made out of it "unbreakable" but we don't use it in phones.