60 seconds with a giant, rollable display for your mobile devices
At some point, you've probably wished that your smartphone had a much larger screen to watch a movie or get work done... but you can't always lug a desktop display or tablet around, can you? If Insert Coin finalist RollRR has its way, you won't have to. It's developing rollable displays that would give your mobile devices a lot more visual real estate without consuming much space in your bag. The prototype on the Engadget Expand show floor is a 10.7-inch roll of e-paper attached to a giant tube, but the ultimate goal is to fit a 21-inch or larger screen (ideally, full color plastic OLED) into a gadget the size of a small umbrella. It's also considering touch technology like 3M's silver nanowires, so RollRR could expand your input area, too -- you could edit a large image on your phone just by unrolling the sheet on a table.
It's still early days for the project, but the Expand demo unit illustrates the concept well; the display winds up neatly and bends in unusual ways. Even without color, it's easy to see the technology letting you read documents while freeing up your phone or tablet for other tasks. However you use its hardware, RollRR plans to move quickly if it sparks a lot of interest. It hopes to launch a crowdfunding campaign in the coming months that would get roll-up displays into the hands of developers, and it's aiming for a full-fledged introduction at a spring trade show like E3.
Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.
