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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."
This sounds like it's a bit small for the need to be rolled up. It happens to be the same resolution as the Pocket PC I'm coding for at my job, and it is rather small. I guess perhaps this could be merely a proof of concept to show they can do something like this, while they work on making something bigger.
With this on my walls and those window LCD's I can finally live my dream of never leaving my parents' basement!
"Whats that you have on you desk? This is an exam young man!"
"Oh Just a sheet of paper and a calculator teacher"
It's hard enough to remember my opinions, never mind the reasons for them..
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.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
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 ;)
Much like many newspapers. And we know how poor they are at displaying information.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Actually, the production line they have built can only produce 5000 units per year. As they say, this is more than research, but less than commercial production. Also, this unit only produces black, white, and 4 types of gray. So don't expect to be able to take your pr0n with you on the road just yet in electric, rollable form.
Imagine having one of these displays with a little USB hookup, a couple of page turning buttons, and nothing else. If the price drops enough, newspapers could sell them to customers along with a subscription service that allows them to download the morning's paper before they head off to work. No more recycling, no more ink-stained fingers...
I realize this is already sort of possible with laptops/pda's, etc.. but there's something comforting about a convenient rolled up paper on the bus ride in. Plus it can be used to swat pesky mosquitos!
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.
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From the article:
Further, "the life of our organic electronics displays has been already prolonged from ?hours to months," [Bas van Rens, general manager at Polymer Vision] added.
I'm trying to figure this one out... is he saying that this cool roll-up display, with four shades of grey and readable as paper, will self destruct after a few months?
And they're so hard to produce, that he can only make 5000 a year? Just to have ten engineers running the line at $100k/yr (or one executive at $1m/yr) would make each one cost $500 bucks.
No wonder he's targeting the military. Nobody else can afford to spend $500-$1000 on displays that don't last much longer than a gallon of milk in a wet paper sack. But I can envision plenty of 100% valid military applications -- after all, if you're going to blow up a million-dollar cruise missile, why not give it a thousand-dollar configuration panel?
Ideally, of course, the military money helps get the screen into the production levels required for the consumer market. Extend the lifespan to six months and drop the cost to under $60 bucks, and people will pay $10/month for disposable e-books.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I was just thinking of something (I know, scary isn't it). These things will probably be priced reasonably in a short period of time and as Phillips likely hopes will one day replace a good chunck of print media.
What about disposal? It is likely that if they are priced reasonably enough they may become just as disposable as newspaper (all right, not quite so bad) but even if only one in ten people disposed of these things after they became damaged (look how we treat our newspapers and tell me these things won't be piling up in the dump) how are we supposed to get rid of them? They likely contain a fair amount of material that is not decomposable within a reasonable amount of time. We already know that computers are adding quite a bulge to the normal waste, how would seveal million sheets of this stuff hold up (quite well I'm guessing, probably 100,000 - 500,000 years!)
This is of course only my perspective but it does give reason to pause.
This display tech would make a great wrist-wrapping PDA gauntlet. Rather than have to hand-hold the PDA/cellphone/MP3/video player beastie, an arm-conforming design would enable handsfree display. The only decision is whether to wear the display on the top of the forearm (risking damage to the display) or wearing it on the inside of the forearm (which seems a little less comfortable).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
A 2cm bend radius means that rolled up, this display will form a tube 4cm wide. This is NOT "roll-up into a pen", this is more "roll up into a scrollcase".
To put in another way: this is a 5 inch diagonal display - say 3x4 inches - that rolls up into a 2 inch wide tube. <sarcasm>Yes, that is a HUGE improvement.</sarcasm>
WHEN they get this to have a 1mm bending radius I'll get really excited. Until then this isn't all that great, although I suppose a 2 inch diameter by 3 inch long tube diameter tube full of battery and electronics, with a pull-out display might be somewhat useful.
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Interesting to note what's current and what's in production...
Dimensions: display + pixels + aperture
Display size: 71 mm x 96 mm (diameter 119 mm).
Number of pixels: 240 x 320.
Optical aperture: 79%.
Driving: refresh rate, voltages, power consumption, volume electronics
Optimum refresh rate: 50 Hz.
Operating voltages: column voltage range: -15V, +15V; row voltage range: -25V, +25V; common electrode voltage range: 0, +5 V.
Power consumption: maximum power consumption of the display: 52 mW. Typical power consumption (10% duty cycle) of the display: 1 mW.
Contrast, reflectance, switching time, bi-stable, grey levels, colour
Contrast: 9:1.
White reflectance: 25%
Switching time: 800 ms.
Bi-stable
Number of grey levels: current: 2; in product: 4.
Colour: current 1; in future product: 1
Flexibility, thickness
Display thickness: current: 350 m; product: 100 m.
Display flexibility: current bending radius: 20 mm;
future product bending radius: 10 mm.
Stick facts: (user interface, bluetooth)
Component area of the addressing electronics: 48 cm2.
Height of the addressing electronics: 2 mm.
Typical size of a 0.5 Wh rechargeable Li-ion battery (10% duty cycle, 1 hour use per day): 1,3 cm3.
Battery life under the same conditions: approximately 1 month.
Bluetooth interface
A little planning goes a long way...
Fujitsu have come out with a similar looking flexible display product.
It looks like we are going to get very light, very energy efficient displays, rsn. These might not be used in a flat form, but would be very useful in making hard cased laptops even lighter...or clipboard devices...its just amazing.
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They also have an artist's impression of these screens, stating that "Future looks flexible".
Apparently the future is finally here.
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By 2005, the rollable displays, which can now be used to read e-mail, could initially be used in military applications as electronic, updatable maps on the battlefield, van Rens predicted. The monochrome display offers four gray levels.
Soldier 1: Where's the pickup point?
Soldier 2: Just a sec... SHIT!
Soldier 1: What?!?
Soldier 2: Got to reboot the map... got a grey screen of death!
<boom>
<splat>
-1 Uncomfortable Truth