ITRI's folding TFT-EPD display: ready for smartphones next year
![](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/p2nxSNrdeBFxFgNyA2cm2g--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTUzNg--/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/FthEFKmsGryGe8XI1sRQYA--~B/aD0zMzU7dz02MDA7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/itri-folding-display-mockup.jpg)
While everyone wants their gadgets, particularly smartphones, to become smaller and smaller we paradoxically want the screens to get bigger and bigger. That's why so much R&D money is spent on wearable, folding, projecting, swiveling, and rollable displays: there's a gold mine to be had by the first to offer a solution with mass-market appeal. Here's Taiwan's great economic hope developed by its Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) with some help from industrial design house, PilotFish. The TFT-EPD (Thin Film Transistor Electrophoretic Display) panel combines a folding-top display with a bottom-sliding secondary (separated by a 1-cm flexible strip) to double the total panel size to 5-inches -- other screen sizes are also in the works. What looks like a break through the center of the combined display above is actually a software taskbar. While these are obvious mock-ups, prototype displays do exist with plans to take the technology -- which will included touchscreen capabilities -- into production sometime next year. Imagine this applied to an N97 followup and you might appreciate our enthusiasm.
%Gallery-38648%
[Via Computerwoche]