Polymer Vision plans to commercialize foldable paper this year

If there's one thing the business-savvy CEOs of the world know, it's that you don't want your competition to get too far ahead of you, and just as Plastic Logic announced its plans to build the first electronic paper plant in Dresden, Germany, Polymer Vision is trying to make good on its nearly two-year old promise. During 2005's IFA expo, Philip assured us all that we'd be blown away by the firm's rollable, bendable displays in a mere two years, and now that 24 months have nearly elapsed, a company spinoff is looking to make it happen. According to a German report, Polymer Vision is still on track for "commercializing the foldable PV-QML5 display" that we've all grown quite fond of. Planning to use the technology in e-books and electronic map guides, the initial 4.8-inch display will tout a 320 x 200 resolution, 10:1 contrast ratio, support for four gray tones, and be only 100 micrometers thick. Sadly, no hard dates were passed down as to when we could expect the first production batch to head out to consumers, but now that there's some serious competition brewing just a few miles down the road, we'd bet a good bit of effort goes into making that 2007 date a reality.

[Via I4U]

[Alex @ Jan 6th 2007 4:54PM]

Foldable paper??? Get outta town!!

[GJP303 @ Jan 6th 2007 6:11PM]

Ahhh, you beat me to the punch!

[MPG @ Jan 6th 2007 5:02PM]

Yay! We'll finally be able to fold paper! A wish come true! Forget the cure for cancer, forget world peace! Foldable paper is just around the corner. Finally, I can actually create all these little objects that my origami books have been telling me about!

Man, Engadget needs some quality control for new articles really badly.

[SporkRocker @ Jan 6th 2007 5:37PM]

WoW. Digital paper that can be folded?! That is such a waste! Even though, it seems pretty damn impressive.

Black and White, whoopie, as long as I could read some of the e-books i have not finished would be ideal on one of these things.

[Charles R Hamilton @ Jan 6th 2007 5:04PM]

This will sure make it easier to pack around the Wall Street Journal in the morning!

[embee @ Jan 6th 2007 5:51PM]

Call me when we have the PADs from ST:TNG

[Xander @ Jan 6th 2007 6:19PM]

reminds me of those phones from that show Earth Final Conflict

[kyle allen @ Jan 7th 2007 12:43AM]

thats perdy dang sweet!

[Lonnie McClure @ Jan 7th 2007 3:18AM]

Unless they improve the contrast, I hope for their sake this stuff is inexpensive.

Foldable/rollable is a plus, but the 10:1 contrast ratio (apparently light grey to grey if the image is accurate) makes it less desireable for e-paper type applications, and the low resolution also counts against it for text applications.

One wildcard is how quickly the display can be refreshed.

[al @ Jan 9th 2007 1:55PM]

Give it a colour screen etc and there is the iPod of the Future.

[Alex D @ Jan 11th 2007 5:38PM]

WOW!!! you can fold paper now!!! ZOMG!!! No, seriously though, you might want to add an e- in that head line...
/endspellingtroll
Apart from that, as you said, customers wont be seeing this for a good while, and it'll only be truly useful when it can display colors or at least full shades of gray, not just 4, you can't display a b&w image with that...