BendableDisplay
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This audacious curved-screen wearable has a gaudy camera
Just as Google is making Wear OS feel less like a smartphone system squeezed onto a watch, ZTE spinoff Nubia wants to slap a full phone on your wrist. At IFA 2018, the company unveiled a prototype device called the Nubia-A, which it's touting as a "wearable smartphone". That, to me, means smartwatch, but given the way companies like Apple, Google and Qualcomm seem to be moving away from wrist-worn smartphone wannabes, my definition might be inaccurate soon. Feast your eyes on this fascinating oddity, though you might want to avoid looking directly at the monstrous onboard camera.
Samsung might have bendable, foldable smartphones ready for 2017
Bloomberg sources say that Samsung is thinking of introducing phones with bendable screens. In fact, Samsung said that it would have that technology ready by 2017 itself, just a few years ago at its investors conference. However, this goes some way to proving that Samsung has developed the tech enough to bring it to consumer product. A pair of devices will have flexible OLED screens, with one folding like a cosmetic compact and another that transforms from a 5-inch smartphone-sized screen to a display roughly eight inches large; so... a tablet.
ICYMI: Mars life, bendy smartphone screens and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-427843{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-427843, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-427843{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-427843").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: It's Space Week, and today's celestial story is an earth-bound look at what a colony of humans would have to endure on Mars. People from Hawaii's Space Exploration Analog and Simulation group just finished an eight month camp-out, cut away from society and only allowed outside when clad in space suits. Not so spacey but equally fascinating, MIT scientists figured out a bendable smartphone display's chemistry. And wearable product company Lumo announced new running shorts that aim to fix your body mechanics when pounding pavement.
Samsung's high-end TVs use nanocrystals for better color, efficiency
Samsung doesn't think your plain old UHD TV will cut it anymore. You know, like the models it debuted last year. Now what's the newest in new? SUHD, with the outfit saying it reserves the "S" designation for its top-tier models we're about to describe. The displays run Tizen and range from 48 inches to 88 inches in size, coming in three different model lines: JS9500, JS9000 and JS8500. Nanocrystal semiconductors are a portion of what sets these apart, with the tech apparently allowing for more accurate colors. The panels offer double the color adjustment points so your calibrator (or perhaps you) can dial the screen in to utmost accuracy and get a better idea of what the filmmaker intended, too.
LG gets patent for mobile UI that reacts to flexible displays, encourages origami
As often as companies love to toy with flexible displays, we're seldom told how we'd control that newfound freedom. Are we supposed to make e-paper cranes? Credit LG for some forward thinking -- it's just receiving a US patent for a 2008-era user interface invention that would use a bending screen to its advantage. The implementation includes two displays, one of which flexes while the other accepts touch; bend or fold the first display, and the touchscreen changes to suit the context. Having two closely linked displays would also let the panels run either in unity or independently. Suffice it to say that the technology is unlikely to roll out as-is on a smartphone, if ever: LG's attention has swung towards having one big touchscreen as of late. However, the interface does give the Korean firm a place to start if it develops devices to match its new flexible batteries.
HP developing wrist PC for military, finally putting that flexible display to good use
Looks like that flexible plastic display Hewlett-Packard has been talking up since 2008 is finally ready to hit the big time. According to Carl Taussig, director of information surfaces at HP Labs, the company is developing a wrist PC at the behest of the US military. Behind the display, a thin strip of metal-coated plastic (merely 50 microns thick) is printed with transistors for, you know, displaying stuff. The thing will be solar powered and, like the display, the solar panels will also be printed, using a technology called PowerFilm. With any luck a prototype should be ready within a year. Now, can we get a PIP Boy already?
Sony's CEATEC concept party includes Walkman bracelet and 0.2mm thin OLED (video)
We've yet to see a trade show where Sony left its Rhode Island-sized booth at home, and CEATEC is no exception. Aside from pushing its 1080p 3D installations with an epic amount of force, the company also had a smattering of swank new concepts on display that caught our eyes. A 0.2 millimeter-thin flexible OLED display was alive and displaying content, while an ultrathin Reader mock-up looked more like a MID and less like a Kindle. Without question, the two items that took our breath away were the all-panel laptop (which tossed the traditional keyboard in favor of a single, swooping display) and the Walkman bracelet, which did little more than talk dirty to us and get our imaginations working overtime. Unfortunately, all the good stuff was behind bulletproof glass with practically zero information to digest, but you can indulge your senses anyway in the gallery below and video after the break. %Gallery-74747%
Resin replaces ITO in latest flexible OLED prototype
Make no mistake, wrapping your mind around the build of an OLED panel is mighty tough to do. Without getting you mired in technobabble, let's just say that indium tin oxide (ITO) has generally been a mainstay in every single OLED that was produced commercially. Now, a team of researchers from AGFA-Gevaert, IMEC, Holst Centre and Philips have prototyped a 12- x 12-centimeter flexible OLED lighting panel that swaps out the ITO for highly-conductive transparent resin electrodes. You see, it's been difficult for OLED builders to secure enough electrical conductivity of ITO in a low-temperature process, and this new methodology is perfectly suited for the coating method (which makes it ripe for printing). The resin itself is being dubbed Orgacon, and tests have shown it to have a 6x improvement over ITO in terms of electrical conductivity. Beyond that, the crews are keeping the secrets safe from the poachers of the world, but here's hoping this amounts to more than just jovial celebration in a far off laboratory.[Via OLED-Display]
HP and ASU demo bendable, unbreakable electronic displays
Well, what do you know? Nearly four years after Arizona State University opened its very own flexible display center comes this, a prototype device that's purportedly easy to manufactur, easy on the environment and practically as strong as Thor. HP and ASU have teamed up to demonstrate the fresh e-displays, which are constructed almost entirely of plastic and consume far less power than traditional computer monitors. The "unbreakable displays" were crafted using self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL) technology invented in HP Labs, and while we'd love to see this in a pliable laptop at CES 2009, we suspect it'll be a few years yet before these slither out to the commercial realm.Update: HP Labs pinged us with this tidbit on the image above. "This image from the Flexible Display Center at ASU represents what the flexible display, a paper-like computer display made entirely of plastic, could look like in the future."
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]
