Bridgestone announces flexible touchscreen color e-reader
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Oct 27th 2009 9:54AM
posted Oct 27th 2009 9:54AM
When we heard word of a "big announcement" back in July we imagined an e-reader of some sort, but what is it that we have here? Based on a technology Bridgestone calls Quick-response Liquid Powder, the company's all-color touchscreen e-book reader is about 5.8mm thick, features a 13.1-inch touch-sensitive e-paper display (with 4,096 colors and a refresh rate of about 0.8 seconds), and some sort of unspecified mobile phone connectivity. Most exciting, of course, is that the entire package -- circuit board, touchscreen, and housing -- are designed to bend together. A neat trick, sure, but probably not too practical for jotting down notes with your stylus. Still, we'd take two. Trials begin at the Kansai Urban Banking Corp early next year, but you can check it out sooner at FPD International 2009 in Yokohama City, Japan, starting tomorrow.
[Via Tech-On]
[Via Tech-On]
Yo check it out dawg, you gotz monitors on ya tires dawg! Your ride has now officially been pimped.
Xzibit jokes are beyond lame now.
That's a pretty neat trick. It might make an excellent springboard for a cat.
Makes sense, they are expert in tires. Somehow the resistance and flexbility of tires could be applied to screen and yet keep them thin.
Umm... okay. I was thinking it seemed a bizarre market for a tire company.
Not really that odd if you read up on the company's history and existing markets.
QUOTE:
"The predecessors of Bridgestone began making diversified products[10] in the 1930s, soon after they started making tires. Today, Bridgestone diversified operations encompass automotive components, industrial products, polyurethane foam products, construction materials, parts and materials for electronic equipment, bicycles and sporting goods. Diversified business generates about one-fourth of total sales in the Bridgestone Group.
Automotive parts are an especially large line of business for Bridgestone in diversified operations. Bridgestone supply automakers with vibration-isolating components, such as engine mounts. Bridgestone also supply air springs for trucks, automobiles and train carriages. Bridgestone market aluminium wheels and other automotive accessories, too."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgestone#Diversified_products
looks like the nook will be outdated pretty quickly with this news...
comes free with every tire purchase!
Now that sounds like it!
I will be anxious to see what the contrast, etc turns out to be.
I would much prefer a larger size such as this to all these paper-back sized readers.
If it all tests out well then this should be not too different from reading an actual magazine or text book.
Brilliant !
re: bendy ... I think it's nice. Probably able to keep it thinner without worrying about stressing items not engineered to be bent.
With most things in life - flexibility is often stronger than rigidity.
As for writing on it when I need to.. I'll equip it with a $1.79 clip board from staples for those moments.
Why wouldn't it be good for writing on? I doubt it has THAT much flex that it would just bend away from the pen/stylus. I could see this being more comfortable to use on like a couch or while lying down or something.
Exactly. It's not as if it bends more than, say, a notebook (you know - the paper kind)...
Not too shabby looking from just those pictures. I've been worried that color would kill the white level of e-paper displays, but that looks decent. 13.1 isn't quite big enough for 8½ by 11 (or A4) but it's definitely getting there (it's about right for taking a quarter-inch margin off all four sides of 8½ by 11).
Ugh, I missed the reflection of the thumb in the corner of the bent display. I know that real paper CAN be glossy, but for something that one is liable to smear their palms all over, could we PLEASE get a matte surface? I hope that they made this prototype glossy simply for the purpose of improving the perceived contrast ratio for the product demonstration, and that in real products they'll choose long-term practicality over the initial "wow" factor.
Also I'm a lot more excited about the color aspect than I am about the flexible aspect... not sure how I feel about that. If it's rigid, it serves as its own clipboard, whereas if it's flexible and you're doing a fair amount of annotating, things could get pretty annoying if it keeps bending away from your stylus.
Is it made from retired tyres?
Isn't a re-tired tire just as good as new?
i feel a bit tired of jokes about tires.
Why do I want it to be flexible again?
because its cool
More paper like, less likely to break is pressure is applied.
You can throw it in a bag and not worry about the screen getting cracked by something else in the bag.
Current e-ink is glass. You drop it and it may break. Flexible e-ink is due anytime now.
Regarding the 0.8 second refresh time -- I hope it doesn't need to 'flash' to clear the screen the way that e-ink does. A 1.6 second page turn would be bad. Even without it, this will require them to rethink menus (nook approach?) cause it'll be slow for interactive stuff.
Don't confuse flexible with being able to resist impact.
It's not the same thing if I can bend that thing a little or if the edge of something hits the
screen with all the mass of the object concentrated to a single point - I highly doubt that
the screen can resist that, although it would be great if it could...
In hammer vs flexible OLED, that OLED screen took a beating and came out looking like a champ. Can't say how this flexible screen tech would handle it but evidently DirtyHarry already conducted his own tests...
Battery life.. battery life... must be amazing.. doesn't this technology do away with backlighting and hence have better battery life?
E-ink doesn't so much do away with backlighting as make it impossible. You have to rely on ambient lighting to see the page... just like paper. The "flexible" version doesn't seem to offer any improvement over "rigid" e-ink wrt to battery life or backlighting. But it does offer a (sort of) color display.
Fortunately, it is much easier to read then the old "reflective" lcd screens on the original Palm PDA's, so the absence of backlighting isn't an issue. Unless you like to read books in bed before you fall asleep. With the lights off. Which I do.
Yes, you just have to carry a big torch around and a few packs of Duracell Ultra D batteries.
Stories like this is why i haven't bought a Kindle yet, and plan on skipping the Nook. I figure that in a year or two color e-readers will be on the market.
In a year or two, you will be able to clip your e-reader from the back of a cereal box.
"huh, and I thought they just made tires!" - that kid from the comercial
most of you probly wont remember that one.
Well, as long as this doesn't explode like their tires do then more power to them. ;)
That was Firestone, not Bridgestone.
@therealmusashi
Bridgestone owns Firestone since 1988 you genius
Harsh. It was just a joke ribbing the quality of all tires. Ribbing....rubber tires...heh. I'm 12 today.
@ hugoliva: Yeah, and Ford owned Jaguar and Aston Martin too - are they the same cars? It was tires under the FIRESTONE brand name that exploded - not Bridgestone, genius. Check how it's referenced in the links below. Hence, my point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy
http://money.cnn.com/2000/08/09/news/firestone_recall/
So close to the wonderful paper-like computer UI from Andromeda! Count me excited.
Flexible? Does it have his and hers lubricants?
If I owned a Kindle or Sony Reader right now I'd feel extremely cheated.
Plastic Logic had commented that their reader was initially flexible but in user testing people thought it was flimsy and it would break (no surprise) so they purposely made it harder. Guess Bridgestone didn't spring for user testing.
P.S. The second menu option in the screenshot says Manga and the fifth one is Video, pretty ambitious.
What's this, I haven't heard one comment about a blow-out sale of this device? Perhaps I am a bit dated in my humor.
Nokia was a tire maker at one point.