I work for a Physics/Chemistry Professor at the local university, and he's working on these same kinds of things. The advantage to it being flexible, at least from what I, a lowly office assistant/tech support person understand, is that the flexible screens can be attatched to clothing and other non-rigid items, for instance, in the map example, a self-updating, self-illuminating map could be attatched to a soldier's sleeve, giving him instant information about his objective. The 'battery and electronics' you mentioned would be sewn elsewhere into his uniform in an out-of-the-way place.
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I work for a Physics/Chemistry Professor at the local university, and he's working on these same kinds of things. The advantage to it being flexible, at least from what I, a lowly office assistant/tech support person understand, is that the flexible screens can be attatched to clothing and other non-rigid items, for instance, in the map example, a self-updating, self-illuminating map could be attatched to a soldier's sleeve, giving him instant information about his objective. The 'battery and electronics' you mentioned would be sewn elsewhere into his uniform in an out-of-the-way place.