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

Use

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Wallpaper

[ArmenTanzarian]

With this on my walls and those window LCD's I can finally live my dream of never leaving my parents' basement!

Could Make Exams more interesting :-)

[osullish]

"Whats that you have on you desk? This is an exam young man!"
"Oh Just a sheet of paper and a calculator teacher"

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?

[fish_in_the_c]

I actually at the moment work for the military in the mission planning field. Much of the mission planning that is already done is done on computers. Some plains ( bigger ones) carry laptops to be able to replay their mission in flight if needed. I'd think the advantage in something like this is as much in the fact that it will not shatter or crack when dropped/ stepped on ect. Not to mention it is lightweight.

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.

Great for newspapers

[addie]

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!

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.

Lifetime: months?

[RobertB-DC]

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.

This could end up being a MAJOR problem...

[10101001011]

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.

PDA Wrist Gauntlet

[G4from128k]

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).

Display specs....

[Ratface]

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

Looks like the fujitsu product

[Beautyon]

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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