Flexible, Color OLED Screens For E-Readers

nadiskafadi writes "Taiwanese researchers have shown off several flexible display technologies in an endeavor to promote e-readers and e-paper. One of the newest technologies from the Industrial Technology Research Institute was a flexible 4.1-inch color OLED (organic light emitting diode) display, which it claims is for the next era of portable devices."

Comments

The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[Oscar_Wilde]

Oh for goodness sake!

The last thing you want in an e-reader is for it to be light emitting. There's a reason we're putting so much effort into developing better eInk displays.

The only people who don't seem to understand this are the ones who don't read much or haven't read much on an eInk screen. It's a huge improvement over anything that works by shining light directly into your eyes.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[Ifandbut]

Well, until we can get E-ink displays to reflect color instead of just gray scale then our only option is light emissions biased displays.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[bertok]

Yeah, I've always wondered about that. If you go back a mere 130 years, the only sources of emitted light a person would ever see (off the top of my head) were:

Sun
Fire
Stars
Lightening
Auroras
Lightening bugs, etc
Foxfire, etc
Fish (or were they too deep then?)

So everything the human eye ever saw was reflected light. Since the advent of the television, people began watching and focusing on emitted light directly, and computers, cell phones, etc have taken that even further.

So what, if anything, does that mean to human vision?

Absolutely nothing, light is light, irrespective of the source.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, until we can get E-ink displays to reflect color instead of just gray scale then our only option is light emissions biased displays.

No, there are two options: Light emitting color displays or gray-scale non-emitting displays. The latter option is preferable in e-readers for the time being.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[drinkypoo]

No it isn't. Arc lamps feature an actual electric arc, but in a fluorescent light the gas is simply stimulated to the point where it emits photons, most of which are in the UV range. Then they strike the phosphor coating, exciting it to the point where it emits its own photons, which unlike those from the gas in the tube consist mostly of visible light. While a filament lamp heats the filament itself until it glows, releasing photons which are in the visible range, the light from an arc lamp is produced when the arc itself occurs, and no phosphor layer is required.

In other words, no, an arc lamp is totally different from a fluorescent lamp in every way besides having a glass container filled with a non-air gas, including the physical mechanism by which light is produced.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, you don't see objects, chairs, tables, buildings, you see the light emitted by them.

Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E.

[mark-t]

Light may be light, irrespective of the source, but we process visual information not merely by number of the photons that reach our eyes, but also largely by the differential between them in adjacent points in an image... thus, a light emitting display appears washed out by a brighter light source because it cannot produce enough light of its own to produce useful contrast in the region of interest (the display). Even though such a display itself may be perfectly illuminated by sunlight physically, the information that one might have wanted to obtain from it remains illegible.

Reflective displays and surfaces do not exhibit this problem. No display that depends entirely on emitting light of its own to create a viewable image can ever hope to address this issue.

No! Larger please.

[SeaFox]

Why is it they have to step forwards to color already? What I want is much larger greyscale displays with better contrast for cheaper. Seriously, give me a U.S. Letter size display with better contrast for under $100 and I will jump on the e-reader bandwagon.

Re:No! Larger please.

[The Evil Couch]

Why is it they have to step forwards to color already? What I want is much larger greyscale displays with better contrast for cheaper. Seriously, give me a U.S. Letter size display with better contrast for under $100 and I will jump on the e-reader bandwagon.

Because that's a false dichotomy? They're going to need to go color eventually and there's no reason that research into both cheaper, bigger monochrome displays and color displays can't be done simultaneously.

Ah yes...

[denzacar]

The "I am the center of the Universe and all should conform to my unimaginative desires" approach.
Damn! I wish I came up with that philosophy first.

Gee.. Who would ever want a thin flexible display that could be bent or rolled up? Madness! Madness I say!
Naah... let's just make displays that are big enough and cheap enough for YOUR needs.