Polymer Vision Produces 5" Rollable Displays

drquizas writes "Polymer Vision (associated with Philips) has produced a rollable display using organic electronic techniques. The display, currently measuring 5" diagonal and capable of displaying QVGA at 320x240, will eventually be targeted towards applications such as military uses (maps anyone?), newspapers and e-books."

Comments

Military maps? Why?

[WIAKywbfatw]

At least if you've got the paper kind you don't have to worry about it crashing, breaking, running out of power, etc. And with the paper kind, you can easily mark way points, targets, etc in seconds - doing that with a software-based system won't be half as fast.

I can't imagine a field commander taking along one of these without wanting a paper map as a backup. The last thing you want to do in a combat zone is be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re:Military maps? Why?

[FrostedWheat]

"A computer with a bullet hole is a paper weight, but a map with a bullet hole is still a map."

I read that on Slashdot ages ago, sorry don't remember who said it!

Re:Military maps? Why?

[kfg]

One of the major complaints of the troops in Iraq is battery life. Everything has batteries in it. Even the helmets have battery packs.

GPS was a necessary tool in the dessert. The land is kinda flat and sand colored. All of it. There are no reference points and navigating on land becomes equivilent to navigating at sea. The "map" is a sand colored chart you can plot your points on, not so much a reference you can use to get from one place to another.

They loved laptops, but only because they could power them from a vehicle. They were issued PDAs but found them fairly useless because the battery life was too short in the field.

It's the new, high tech army, sponsored by Duracell and the Energizer Bunny.

There are some obvious advantages to this display. Of course it's light, it uses little power, in some respects it can be used as a chart. You can mark it. It doesn't physically break anymore than a plastic placemat breaks. It's water proof. So long as it get data the single display can be any map the data source has access to so you don't need to be lugging around huge stacks of charts.

But the biggest thing that negates some of the advantages this display has is that it is inherently static state. That is to say it only needs to be powered to change the display. Not only does that mean very little power drain in use, it means once an image is displayed it can be completely disconected from the power and any other device and the image remains.

That's pretty frickin' cool.

I'm already planning (I've already read about this thing) to use a screen like this for the electronic navigation system of a new boat. Take a GPS reading, or display a bit of chart, turn it off and the reading/chart remains. One brief flash of power than off again.

On the other hand if you think I'm going bluewater without a chronometer and sextant you're nuts. I always expect electronic gear to fail about the second day out. I'm often right.

KFG

The only thing that worries me is SPAM

[10101001011]

That is all I need, being able to check the latest newspaper only to find SPAM and ads. I've seen it happen to the Internet in general, to AVantGo, even to MobiPocket (thankfully not as much). I do truly hope this works out as it seems like it would be pretty cool. I'm thinking those REWARD FOR LOST DOG posters could be VERY interesting ;)

Re:important factoid,

[kinnell]

for the momment, it's monochrome

Much like many newspapers. And we know how poor they are at displaying information.

portability

[theMerovingian]

This is pretty cool, but the picture that shows up on the display has to be generated from some data source or CPU-carrying device. If you plug in your rollable display to a laptop/PDA, it isn't nearly as cool.

Alternatively, the screen could just store one image permanently. In which case it would be just expensive, unreliable paper.

That being said, I am all for the technology. When they can make a transparent sticker that can be turned on as a TV/monitor, I would buy one. Forget flatscreen, your TV would just be a sheet of glass on a stand. That would be cool.