If you’re worried about dropping your e-reader—and breaking the screen—there’s good news ahead.
It’s the coming of rugged, flexible screens, both the electronic paper and OLED varieties and perhaps others.
We’ve reported on flex screens before, but EE Times Asia has a nice little roundup mentioning possibilities from Bridgestone, PVI and LG, among others. Excerpt:
LG Display Co. Ltd showed its flexible activities on two fronts at SID 2008: e-paper and OLEDs. The flexible 12-inch and 14.3-inch EPDs at its booth are being co-developed with E Ink.
The smaller display is a monochrome device for e-books; the larger is a multicolor EPD with a 1,280pixel x 900pixel WXGA format. Both use a stainless steel foil substrate. A company spokesman said that LG has also developed a myriad of monochrome and color flexible displays. The smallest of them is a 4-inch AMOLED developed jointly with Universal Display Corp. [Links added.]
Hey David, glad to see you’re back.
Your mentioning OLED screens makes me think of another Jetsons-style reading solution. OLED lighting contemplates whole walls as light sources. So why not have them programmable as displays as well?
So you’d just point your smartphone at the nearest wall or ceiling in whatever room you’re in, and there’s the text you’re reading, at the last point you left off.
These larger displays in the long-term should really help expand the market for all types of e-books, especially books whose layout characteristics just don’t translate well to a reflow format.