First Mobile Device with Rollable Display

TC writes "Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision today [February 5, 2007] announced an agreement which will see the leading operator of the Italian mobile industry and the pioneers of the rollable display industry join to develop and launch the world's first rollable display enabled mobile device to market in 2007. After seven years of gestation it seems that E Ink is coming of age."

Comments

Wait a minute...

[Apocalypse111]

7 years of gestation, and its suddenly coming of age? What happened to childhood? These new technologies grow up so fast... Hey! Damn kids! Get off my lawn!

Re:Wait a minute...

[AKAImBatman]

I believe that the poster meant to say, "Seven years after I noticed it..."

Electronic Paper was invented at Xerox in the 1970's. It's a LOT older than seven years. The only reason why people are noticing it is that advances in electronics are slowly making it practical.

It's a bit like Plasma displays. The stock market used a massive monochrome unit for decades before consumers jumped on "this newfangled Plasma TV thingy!"

Re:Wait a minute...

[plover]

Really old CRTs and LCDs only had one cell per pixel, for grayscale.

No, Fairly old CRTs and LCDs only had one cell per pixel, for grayscale. Really old LCDs had seven segments per digit. Really old CRTs were character oriented, and you had no control over individual pixels (back when ASCII art was the height of computer graphics.) Ancient CRTs were vector oriented storage scopes, allowing you to draw lines, but not erase them without erasing the entire display.

You kids these days and your fancy bitmapped screens.

Too bad.

[Aladrin]

This is a really neat device. It's too bad the company is so stupid.

It's completely locked down by DRM. The ONLY books it'll read have to be bought from them.

It's only marketed in Italy. Holy cow... That's awful short-sighted.

The webpage there is also riddled with stupid comments like 'display larger than the handset itself' ... Paradox? No, just stupidity. They mean larger than the handheld when in storage form.

Re:Too bad.

[Mateo_LeFou]

Actually, I like that it's only marketed in Italy. That means someone could (and should) get one, bring it to the states, reverse-engineer the DRM off of it, and publish a HOWTO so we can all use these things to access whatever books we want. If telecom isn't selling the thing here, I don't think you can SLAPP that kind of activity down. (IANAL, just thinking aloud)

Re:Too bad.

[flyingfsck]

A successful new technology requires at least three companies to go bankrupt first. Counting 1...

Not shipping = vapourware

[StrawberryFrog]

so opposed to the last x years where these kinds of devices have been not available, they are now ... not available?

Re:Not shipping = vapourware

[colinbrash]

so opposed to the last x years where these kinds of devices have been not available, they are now ... not available?

Yeah, but they are almoster available!

Software

[Hiween]

I wonder about the software in the device. From the article I understand that content "can be delivered and bought through TIMs mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device". This may screw up the device, not only because the provider can ask for insane amount of money for the service, but because it may not have what I want to read. I guess most popular newspapers will be there, but what about PDFs I download from the net?, what if I have a Safari account that allows me to download books in PDF format?

Good idea, maybe will pass onto other devices.

[danpsmith]

Everyone seems to be complaining about the company involved, but I see this as a revolutionary development. The problem I've always had with tiny devices is tiny screens. It's great to have the ability to surf the web on your phone, but why bother when you got a 1"x1" little screen and have to squint the whole time. Watching movies on a 1.5"LCD just isn't really that attractive. With something like this applied more in the industry you could fold out your display when you are sitting about, fold it up when you need to move and never miss a step. Could be a great development for lots of mobile uses. Even if this model and company don't pan out, as long as the product makes it to market and wows a couple of people, it could indicate a trend that could expand into further possibilities, which is always a good thing.

Re:Good idea, maybe will pass onto other devices.

[Henry V .009]

You won't be able to watch a movie on something like this. Refresh rates for E-Ink are on the order of a second. Fine for reading though.

It already happened

[Henry V .009]

E-Ink finally coming of age? I just finished reading the new Dan Simmons novel on my E-Ink Sony Reader, thank you very much.

Specs not impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

From the companys website:
http://www.polymervision.com/Technology/CurrentSpe cifications/Index.html

Current Specifications
- Contrast: 10:1.
- White reflectance: 35%-40%
- Switching time: 0,5-1s
- Optimum refresh rate: 50 Hz
- Number of pixels: 240 x 320 (quarter VGA - 4.8")
- Rolling radius: 0.75 cm

like a presidential campaign

[Speare]

Wow, that blurb was... well...

It's just like the twenty or so folks who have "put in their name to start an exploratory committee to determine the chances of success in an election bid to become the next President of the United States..."

It's all just hot air and vapor.

More on E-Ink Displays

[necro81]

The current issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine has a piece giving an overview of current E-Ink-based mobile displays, particularly how they relate to newspaper distribution. They don't mention this new product specifically, but hold out the notion of flexible E-Ink displays as near-future possibilities.

Nature's End

[lazarus]

Score another one for sci-fi. The first reference to this kind of technology I came into was a book called "Nature's End" by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka which was published in 1986. The protagonist used a rolled-up display on a portable computer called an IBM "AXE" if I remember correctly (was a long time ago).

Reading through the book summary today gives me something of a deja-vu (on the heels of the UN report on the environment):

"The authors of the best seller ... depict in powerful detail a 21st-century Earth with devastated environment and rampant overpopulation. A rich and comfortable elite coexists with malnourished, pitiful billions, "the victim generation." The rich enjoy youth preservation treatments and other biomedical wonders while the rest just endure the toxicity and pollution."

The book was set in 2025. A deal today at $0.20!