Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Flexible Screen For Phones Just Two Years Away
But I Want It Now Dept: I swear I have been writing about digital ink and flexible screens for years and years with no products in sight. Even the ideas for how to use these screens seemed lackluster - like replacing a 50-cent newspaper with a screen you could roll up and put in your pocket - nice concept and then not really so great when it doesn't do that much more than a newspaper does and has been doing for centuries.

This is why I was delighted to see this piece from TechWeb's Personal Tech Pipeline, on a new display from Philips aimed at cell phone screens - the one display technology hampered moist by cost, battery life and too small a size to do mush more than offer too-small versions of photos, video, and games.

"Called the Polymer Vision PV-QML5, it's a 5-inch ultra-thin and very light 320 x 240 pixel active-matrix display. You use it by grabbing a part of the phone and pulling it like a scroll.

"The display has four gray levels, a monochrome display and is designed to replicate the look of paper. It uses what the geniuses at Philips call a bi-stable electrophoretic display effect, which is technology from E Ink Corp. that requires very little power. The company has been simultaneously working on production technology for mass producing the display."

The bad news...Philips says it will take 2 years to get this to store shelves, which in my experience means more like five or more, but it was nice seeing something come to life a little bit more than the rolled up back pocket displays. (sigh)

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