Fujitsu's flexible, low-power color screen
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Jul 13th 2005 9:12AM
posted Jul 13th 2005 9:12AM
Okay, so everyone and their grandma seems to be prototyping some sort of flexible display these days, and Fujitsu's rolling in with their offering, which features low power consumption and, in fact, requires no power whatsoever to display the last image before power is cut (and if anyone can tell us why that's supposed to be really useful, by all means). Yeah, don't get too excited, neither, 'cuz it still won't be commercialized anytime soon.
"requires no power whatsoever to display the last image" - This would be really usefull if used in an ebook reader, price tag, advert, or any other application that needs low power consumtion but no motion graphics.
"requires no power whatsoever to display the last image before power is cut (and if anyone can tell us why that’s supposed to be really useful, by all means)"
1) well how about e-books, why power the screen as the image does not change at all once on a page
2) Digital cameras - again when looking at images you have taken you don't need to screen to be powered (a great battery saver)
And Im sure there are thousands of other uses for power efficiant features like this
the reason it's beneficial to take no power to display the last image (i.e. to require power only to CHANGE the image) is digital paper. By only requiring brief bursts of power in most situations (e.g. reading a book), a portable device can last thousands of hours (see the sony Librie). Even if used to display video, this will still be efficient when doing anything BUT video.
If you used it for a news reader/ebook that feature would help conserve alot of power. The screen could be shut off after each screen load and only turned on when you goto another screen.
its useful for power-saving, duh. if the screen isn't changing, then theres' no need to power the processor.
I agree with comments #1 and #2, you guys really need to think a bit more about what you write here.
Don't get me wrong, I love the site and visit it every day, but you're rattling off increasingly flippant reports and making yourselves sound dumb.
Finally, now we have the technology to construct a digital scroll. Since the days of yore has man yearned to have the tactile sensation of manual expanding a small unit into a large readable surface.
well as far as the applications for not requiring power to display the last image go, reading an ebook for instance, your device would be able to conserve power while you were still able to read said book, then simply use a little power to turn on the screen for a moment to turn the page. I think that could be a huge battery saver when simply looking over documents and the like.
Wow Barb, looks like you sort of dropped the ball.
Another usefull application that hasn't been mentioned is a nice, thin digital photo frame. In the WAY future, big, ever changing billboards.
Dang it, one l in "useful".
Why are there no plans to commercialise this? Looks like a killer product to me :/
This is totally up the iPod's alley - "requires no power whatsoever to display the last image" - like, whenever the iPod battery dies, it flashes the "no battery" symbol for a little while, then shuts off. You never know if the iPod needs a reset, or if it's battery ran out.
This has so many potential uses that it's amazing... imaging all the product prices on grocery shelves being changed wirelessly by the moment with no power consumption other than when the change is being made.
How long does the lat image stay for hough?
Does it not need any power to show the last image for 1/30th of a second or will it stay indefinetly?
yeah, but can you cut it into piecesand it still work... like a certain prototype.... si[pix]
number 6 is right. This post was just a troll basically.. I don't get the point for that remark. Not funny or anything...
Assertion: Displaying the last image after removing power is VERY USEFUL because you can do something cool like a dynamic portable newspaper or document.
Proposal: Imagine a notebook of screen that refreshes with the most recent news articles every time you plug it in, then you can unplug it and take it anywhere you want to actually read the refreshed, static document. Most people with palm pilots, finding them mostly useless, already do this with their sync cradle to get the latest random and unnecessary articles from slashdot [or whatever their popular nonformation outlet is]
Extrapolation: Toss in a small battery, for an upgraded version, to allow the document to display stored sub-articles and then you have a portable, rereshable google news top level newspaper with a hierarchy of articles you can peruse at your liesure - offline and unplugged.
Conclusion: I'm sure some consumer will unnecessarily consume it!
C'mon you guys - clearly, any display made in the future must be used primarily for shooter games or fancy cellphone crap. One display, one user, period. And that one user needs constant dazzlement or they might get not have every nanosecond filled with mindless entertainment.
Ebooks? The only reading in the future might be too-fast blogs like this (until they're replaced by skull sockets).
I'm sorry Barb, but that is one of the stupidest comments I have ever heard. It would be like someone saying "RAM stores data just fine... why on earth would we ever need Flash?"
Ignoring the fact that anything that saves power is good, lets consider what not needing power supplied unless you change the display means: It means that once you have set your display, you can take it ANYWHERE without need of a battery and it will hold. This is supposed to be E-Paper... the lack of power requirement means that this can be used anywhere that paper can... Can you think of a few uses now?
Sorry if I'm going a little overboard here, but just... wow. This is supposed to be a gadget site... I would really expect the writers to have some understanding of what they're reporting on.
I agree with #12 to a certain extent, but when you have to do a different plano and replace the products, or add things, that would require someone to reprogram where everything is in a row. But then again you could create something like a non-linear editing system to drag and drop new inventory and assign its price and I guess it could work now that I typed out my concern, ha. But yeah, they really need to start pushing this stuff out to the general public. We are way to smart to have these things take 5 years to see it in the real world.
I'm going to have to agree with those that said that was a stupid comment, Barb. Geesh. Think before you write. This is the kind of technology that can revolutionize e-reading, especially if it's refresh speed and image quality are better than the e-ink display on the Sony Librie.
...think about having walls made out of this stuff. You want to paint your room, you want to add pictures to the wall, you want to wallpaper, you just design it on a computer and it displays it on the wall. The wall becomes a TV as well. So you have one display that shows pictures, wall color, television, etc etc anywhere and any way you want it. The best part is that with no required power for the static parts, when the power goes out, the wall stays the same color, the pictures stay there - the most you lose is functionality of your TV, just like it is today =)
How about gasoline ad boards at the gas station (again in the farther future, once this stuff becomes more common). They only change their prices a *few* times a day, so why power it all the time.
And if nothing else your system could simply display "System: De-activated" before you turn it off, and they you know that it's off.
It could be nice if as an emergency shutdown procedure happens if it managed to get off an error message, you could read it even if you couldn't get the device back up again. Heck, to a certain extent IT could probably read it if/when you power the machine back up and have a little bit smoother restart (it would know what you were doing before it shut off).
Are ya'll sure this isn't actually a design FEATURE and not just a facet ? I think it's actually got a lot of potential for specific use.
'Course it could be a DANGEROUS feature at that. If you're viewing highly questionable material at work and as your boss comes around the corner you tap the off button and your display just dims slightly but remains completely visible...
BTW, stop beating up on Barb. All Barb did was ask for our/your thoughts on the subject...no need to get testy... :)
I imagine this, as many others have said, being used for price tags. Imagine having a simple press in sign designed to be attached to the shelf. The shelf itself is networkable and is POE enabled. When you move products from one side of the store, you could plug in a scanner, or it can have one built into it with a button. The stock boy could grab a unit, press a button or code in and scan it. From now on, that sign will show the current price for peas or Cheeze It's or what have you. When they go on sale, it updates the screen automagically. The labor in putting all those signs up is tremendous....believe it or not. It's not hard work, it just takes a while to put up 500+ signs every week.
Hahaha! As soon as I read this I imagined Minority report, and the singing cereal box. Imagine that, if they put a small battery in your ceral box, and when u picked it up it played, now that would get annoying. But I would love this stuff, it would revolutionise, well, screens. (well duh, state the obvious, lol)
Hahaha! As soon as I read this I imagined Minority report, and the singing cereal box. Imagine that, if they put a small battery in your ceral box, and when u picked it up it played, now that would get annoying. But I would love this stuff, it would revolutionise, well, screens. (well duh, state the obvious, lol)
Barb Barb Barb... Do you get it now?
Well beyond the whole "set it and forget it" aspect, if you consider that all of our current display technologies require constant power to keep their images alive, the power savings that could be realized by this new Fujitsu display could be pretty impressive. Seiko has already commercialized a similar monochrome technology that was covered on the site a while ago (their new paperthin clock.)
Here's another article on it... http://www.t3.co.uk/news/general/general/browse_pics_and_texts_wirelessly_on_e-paper
I am a comment spammer: Bertyj@gmail.com
another thing is that you only need to power up the cells that needs to change so if say your working on a text document then the only parts of the screen that needs to update are the ones showing the new letters and so on.
still, anyone have some info on update speed of these things?
allso, notice how its readable at a sharp angle while bending, doing something similar to a lcd will atleast produce strange artifacts and discoloring.
this could be the single biggest power saver for laptops and other devices. and it would allso make the idea of a digital picture frame perfectly valid (just update the image and forget about it :P )
so, how soon can they make a screen in about 1024x768? and with atleast 65000 colors :P
You know what would be great?
If someone mentioned how stupid Barb was with his comment and then started talking about ebooks.
I think that would be super, why hasn't anyone done that yet?
I guess I'll just have to wait....
Yeah, I agree with #9. A digital picture frame that doesn't need to be constantly powered and refreshed just to display the same image... this screen would be ideal for that kind of application.
Everyone seems to have all of these ideas for the use of this product, however, many of them simply don't make sense.
Nowhere in the article does it discuss the potential cost per square inch of this display. Ideas such as "Price tags" may result in not having to walk to the product to change the price, but how often does something sit around long enough for the product to change? and if it does, consider the fact that a roll of price stickers costs about $1.50 - $2.00 and has about 1500 price tags. I seriously doubt these displays will ever be even close to that cheap. Consider the price of a plasma screen television, now consider the cost of one without burn-in, Much much thinner, and the size of a wall. There may be some potential problems with applications such as this as well outside of cost. How far can the signal travel in one of these without serious degredation?
This would be a great thing for E-books, but honestly, I am not sure how much else. Are they durable? if not, cell phones are out. Do they have a decent refresh rate? if not, laptops, PDA's, and many many other applications are out.
What about backlighting? I haven't researched any of the details, but I didn't read anything abotu backlighting. For e-books, you're still going to need a backlight OR a white background. Against a dark surface, you probably can't read it.
It will be useful to billboard makers.
Here, here #7 and it also means I will soon be able to get my "Earth Final Conflict" flexible screen, slider phone (as small as a cell phone when collapsed, as large as a laptop when expanded). Sweet ;^)...
"requires no power whatsoever to display the last image before power is cut (and if anyone can tell us why that’s supposed to be really useful, by all means)"
It is perfect for cheating in college exams, Yeah you heard it here first.
"requires no power whatsoever to display the last image before power is cut"
Darn, I won't be able to take advantage of 3 month expired sales at stores anymore. They never seem to replace sale tags at a lot of places. There could be real ROI for any retail establishment that installed these displays.
Think next generation wallpaper.
Thanks to everyone who fell for the Tom Sawyer bit! ;)
" Yeah, don’t get too excited, neither, ‘cuz it still won’t be commercialized anytime soon."
Actually, it will be commericalized next year. That's "pretty soon" in my books.
http://www.techjapan.com/Article1049.html
Barb, if absolutely no one understands a joke, it's not a joke anymore. It's just a stupid remark.
Come on, Engadget, you of all people should've been able to figure out the usefulness of no-power static displays.
Ironically, cutting edge peripherals like the Optimus OLED keyboard reported a few hours earlier stand to benefit greatly from innovations such as these. There, yet another practical application for a semi-static display =)
Who needs something that "requires no power whatsoever to display the last image?"
Soldiers who need a map displayed on their forearm but can't carry the battery power to keep the system continually running.
Why's it useful to have no power consumption to display the last image? Well, as I'm designing a device that would greatly benefit from this, I'll tell you. My gadget takes GPS input and the output of a laser range finder to display the coordinates of a target. Since the laser range finder takes its shot only when the operator commands, the display updates infrequently. This is a battery operated device, and anything that saves power consumption pays off in how long it can be used before the batteries have to be replaced. I've gone to a lot of trouble to locate a low power display for this thing, and a zero-power one would be heaven.
Useful for nothing else but...porn baby porn!
There is already and OLED (27" ?) tv that has been made but its not flexible it is in a fixure but extremely thin.
There is already and OLED (27" ?) tv that has been made but its not flexible it is in a fixure but extremely thin.