RollableDisplay
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LG is bringing a rollable OLED TV to CES 2019
CES is still a couple of months away, but we're already hearing whispers of what to expect at the show in January. As usual, LG will be one of the manufacturers presenting a flood of new technology, and among them you should expect to see a rollable OLED TV. Engadget has seen internal documents highlighting intended topics for the presentation, and it appears that the prototypes we've seen in past years from LG Display are ready to take center stage, perhaps with an eye for launching it next year as a real product.
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.
Polymer Vision's latest display rolls up, still doesn't ship out (video)
Despite a litany of missed launch dates, bankruptcy filings, and corporate buyouts, Polymer Vision continues to trudge forward, and we're more than happy to ogle its latest flexible screen. This time, the new hotness is a six-inch SVGA display repeatedly rolled-up 25,000 times at a radius of only six millimeters. The resulting scroll is apparently slightly smaller than a dime. With that kind of repetitive endurance, this tech seems well suited for building that Readius-like eReader Wistron promised a while back; not that we're holding our breath, or anything.
HP flexible display unfurled on video
HP has been working on flexible displays for some time now, but it looks like things are starting to get a bit more real. Not real as in actual products, mind you -- but real like a big, flexible display spotted out in the wild. Doing the honors for this one is Hardware.info, which not only snapped shot above, but captured some of the action on video (head on past the break for that). Interestingly, HP doesn't actually see these panels being used in truly flexible or rollable displays -- the material itself would only survive being rolled up about a half dozen times -- but instead sees them being used to simply make displays thinner and lighter. [Thanks, Frank]
Polymer Vision announces rollable displays are in production
We've been looking at wacky prototypes of rollable displays for so long that it's hard to believe they could ever get real. Polymer Vision, a Philips spin out, has just announced that it has its production facilities up and running and its first rollable displays have made it off the assembly line. And they're not leaving it at that. Polymer Vision's first product, the 3G-enabled Readius, is supposed to be available before the end of the year. That doesn't give them much time to slap the rest of the parts together, but hopefully the Readius can be giving Kindle some competition before we get too terribly accustomed to its DRM-ed ways.
Polymer Vision's Readius rollable display gets face time
Talk about a long time coming, as what is now Polymer Vision has seemed to finally put all the pieces together and produce an actual working product from the idea envisioned by Philips around two years ago. We knew the spinoff was looking to commercialize the product later this year, but after nearly 24 months of coming up empty, a bit of understandable skepticism begins to seep through. Nevertheless, the firm's rollable, pocket-friendly "Cellular-Book" was out and showing its stuff at 3GSM, proving that there's at least something there to put on store shelves. Although the unit on display was indeed a standalone device -- sporting 16 shades of grey, USB, "10-days" of battery life, 4GB of internal storage, and GPRS, EDGE, and DVB-H connectivity just like we'd heard -- Polymer Vision is actually hoping to integrate its e-paper technology into mobile handset displays in the near future. Sadly, there still didn't seem to be any hints of a release date for the nifty pocket reader, but be sure to click on through for the very long awaited pictures of the Readius in action.[Via Slashdot]
Polymer Vision unveils "Cellular-Book" with rollable display
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]
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]
