Phillips spin-off Polymer Vision looks to be making fast work on its most recent promise to commercialize its foldable display this year, with the company set to officially unveil the first product to use the would-be paper killer at next week's 3GSM conference in Spain. Somewhat awkwardly dubbed the "Cellular-Book," the device will initially be offered by Telecom Italia (in Italy, naturally) although it appears to be more book than cellular. The main bit of kit is, of course, that rollable, foldable display, which can extend to a full five inches yet still wrap up into a device "smaller than the typical mobile phone." The cellular part of the equation comes in the form of a combination of EDGE, UMTS, and DVB-H capabilities, which will give you access to an array of different services viewable in 16 levels of gray, including e-mail. RSS feeds and, of course, e-books, which you'll be able to purchase through Telecom Italia's mobile network. Though they won't make as heavy use of that display, you'll also be able to load up the device with music and podcasts, with a relatively hefty 4GB of storage provided to satisfy your media appetite. Unfortunately, there's no word on price or a launch date just yet, though that would seem to be likely detail to be revealed at the big unveiling next week.

[Via TeleRead, thanks Richard]

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]