LG begins mass production of first flexible e-ink displays

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/124229-lg-begins-mass-production-of-flexible-plastic-e-ink-displays

by mrsebastian • 14 years ago

113 45 14 years ago

darxius• 14 years ago

This has some exciting applications. Has there been an official announcement on retail price?

No, the press release is pretty slim on details (volume, price, tech). Presumably the cost/price is OK if they've begun mass production, though -- they'll be competing directly with conventional (glass) e-ink stuff to begin with, so the price will need to be comparable.

MatthewPhillips2• 14 years ago

Yeah, this is just going to be used in normal ebook readers at first, until it proves its worth. We're waiting a year or two before we have rolled up displays we can stick in our pockets.

MatthewPhillips2• 14 years ago

This is a component, not a consumer product.

corin_3• 14 years ago

But component prices are often public, and help people predict the cost of devices using the components before they are announced - so still very relevant to consumers.

twelvechairs• 14 years ago

Im curious as to what you think the exciting applications are. The article mentions an ebook reader - which is one potential, although I'm not sure it will be something everyone will be clamouring for. I'm (personally) hard pressed to think of other major applications though...

evincarofautumn• 14 years ago

I really love e-ink, and flexible displays are a nice gimmick—but until they improve, they are still just that. I’m concerned that flexibility will encourage people to bend the display beyond its limit, rather than serve its intended purpose of insurance against accidental bending.

What I’m really looking forward to are outright foldable (yet uncreasable) display surfaces. Done reading the e-paper? Fold it up and stuff it in your bag, worry-free.

scdc• 14 years ago

Or I like the idea of a rolling up an e-reader into a cylinder to tuck in a bag.

dhughes2• 14 years ago

On the TV version of TekWar they had roll up mobile communication devices. Whenever I read of eink or flexible displays I always think of TekWar.

simcop2387• 14 years ago

I like the idea of having the screen pull out link window blinds myself. Need a bigger screen for something? pull it further. Don't need a big one to read on the bus? pull it out a little. it would even give you a convineint place as a manufacturer to put the batteries, and mount the control hardware for it. It ought to be even fairly trivial to determine how much of the screen is pulled out and adjust the display accordingly.

samstave2• 14 years ago

I like the idea of these being unfurled like a scroll, held in front of the reader: "hear ye! Hear ye!"

smackfu3• 14 years ago

The stiffness needed to protect a glass screen from any flexing adds weight and structure that you can reduce with a flexible screen.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

What I’m really looking forward to are outright foldable

In many ways, foldability is just the medieval substitute for a dynamic display. Instead of switching screens, you flip pages. Instead of zooming maps, you unfold the whole thing, then fold over everything except the part you're interested in.

corin_3• 14 years ago

In some scenarios sure, in others I'd disagree.

Take your maps example as a generic zooming vs. folding example. When you use something like Google Maps, if you set your browser window to show you 2cm x 2cm, would that be big enough, I doubt it. And yet your screen doesn't have to be as big as an unfolded traditional map, thanks to panning and zooming. This shows that a.) dynamic displays can reduce the need for folding but that b.) there will always be a (subjective) question of what works best.

As to a more realistic example - as a kindle reader, I wouldn't want a screen smaller than it already has, no matter how much zooming or scrolling it offers. And while the device can fit in a pocket, I generally don't like having it in one. If it was half the width and I could fold it in half, I would love that.

kijin• 14 years ago

I don't think foldability is just a medieval thing. People want screen real estate. They want to see their photos and videos in a large form factor. They also want to carry the screen in their pockets or backpacks. Foldable paper is a neat idea that achieves both. I would find it rather frustrating if I could only zoom into small parts of a map and never view the whole terrain in its 40-inches-across, 60-degrees-of-angular-diameter glory. Size matters.

Scrolling and zooming are not appropriate substitutes for folding in electronic displays. A real substitute would be a pocket-size device that can project an image of arbitrary size in mid-air, so that people can see their maps IMAX at a distance of 3 feet if they want to.

Edit: some rewording.

stuartmemo2• 14 years ago

Is flexible much different than "thinner"? Does it naturally become more flexible the thinner it gets?

_mayo• 14 years ago

Not necessarily. A piece of glass can be thin, but will snap if bent.

stuartmemo2• 14 years ago

Sorry, I meant with regard to e-ink displays.

bane• 14 years ago

Since the substrate they are using is lighter, in the short term this means lighter e-books, in the long term there's no reason we can't have portable roll-up computers like Val Kilmer had in Red Planet.

saturdaysaint• 14 years ago

My first reaction was to scoff, but this actually improves e-readers in a few critical ways. E-ink screens have been so easy to break that they all but require a (usually) cumbersome case to survive a trip in a backpack or, say, accidentally rolling over on it in bed. This should improve that, and it sounds like the weight savings aren't negligible either. Amazing that we're close to being able to carry a library in something barely heavier than a sheet of paper. This will also make larger format readers more practical.

devolve• 14 years ago

Living in a small apartment with no room for a television at the moment, I can't wait for the curtain display concept to become reality.

Finally the display can be put to use, even when it's not in use.

tocomment• 14 years ago

I guess they could make a "book" form factor with say 10 pages each made of the flexible e-ink sheets. That way you could still have a book experience and turn pages. Maybe when you get to the last page it refreshes all 10 pages for the next section of the book.

I'm not really sure if it would be useful but it would be a cool magical book.

jamesbritt• 14 years ago

I'd like to have one physical book that becomes any virtual book.

Differing page counts and all that aside, a UI feature I like is being able to locate content based on relative location, which is especially handy when I can recall the general concept but not specific search terms.

smackfu3• 14 years ago

This tech would be pretty neat to just wrap around the edge of the book, to give a spine with the title of what you are currently reading.

Too2• 14 years ago

I've heard this idea before and always thought it was silly until i saw it live.

There's a museum in Oslo (can't remember which one) that has a book like this. The book is really big, like an old school story book, and it's fixed into the table, there's maybe 10 pages. They have a projector in the ceiling above the book projecting images so they fit exactly onto the pages in the book. Each page has an invisible rfid-chip embedded in the paper so when you turn the book some sensor knows which page you have open and the projector changes page accordingly. (it also displays video and has touch-interface but that's irrelevant for this discussion). It feels magic to flip through it even though the implementation is quite trivial once you decompose it. Too bad it can't be done without having it in a fixed location.

When you are a group of people it is much easier to flip through and keeping a mental map over physical pages instead of fighting over who gets to control the scrollbar on a computer. But admittedly, it is also a bit gimmicky.

smackfu3• 14 years ago

Interesting that they are beginning mass production. In today's manufacturing process, doesn't that mean they already have a customer?

corin_3• 14 years ago

> According to LG, the first plastic display-toting e-readers are expected to emerge in Europe “at the beginning of next month,” with the US presumably following swiftly after.

So either they will be releasing their own device, or they already have someone wanting to use their screens. Either way, the answer to your question is "yes".

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

It’s unlikely that e-ink will ever compete with LCDs when it comes to watching videos or playing games, but e-ink definitely has the edge on reading.

When they can inexpensively support enough reactivity to support touch interfaces, it goes much beyond just reading.

hmottestad• 14 years ago

The active matrix in today's E-ink displays are actually very reactive. The sony t1 scrolls "smoothly" on webpages: http://youtu.be/OKCDXwCmPUA?t=20s

It still needs to refresh the entire screen to get gradients though.

I'm also liking the higher dpi on LG's screen, after using my new ipad the sony t1 seems pixelated.

stcredzero4• 14 years ago

Sounds like they are getting there.

samstave2• 14 years ago

I don't know how big these can be but I would love to see columns wrapped in this stuff with scrolling patterns, maps, text etc

scarmig• 14 years ago

Hmm, what kind of refresh rates can we expect? Similar to rigid e-ink?

Now the question is when we get flexible, touch Mirasol... which will presumably be after we get Mirasol.

paparoger• 14 years ago

I read it this morning and was pretty excited to see where this may lead into. Very cool stuff!

riffraff• 14 years ago

having cracked the glass in two kindles, making them useless.. this is such a nice news, but too late :)

crazygringo2• 14 years ago

Am I the only one that doesn't understand the advantage?

I don't want paper-like e-ink displays that start to feel all "used" after a couple of days. Bending them will presumably keep them from lying flat later on. People talk about wanting to "fold" them -- and then you'll never get the creases out. And I don't want a whole book of these sheets -- for me, the whole advantage is that an e-reader doesn't need page turning!

If I had a flexible display, I would just keep it protected in a hard-backed case, thus negating the whole point. Am I missing something here?

Too2• 14 years ago

1. It doesn't break. In the article they say it repeatedly survives 1.5m drops.

2. It's easier to fit into your bag/pocket. You don't have to fold it for that, simply bending it a just bit would help in many scenarios. Plus again, it doesn't break so you can use your back pocket for your smart phone and sit on it.

crazygringo2• 14 years ago

But a display by itself is useless. I'm assuming that the electronics and battery that drive the display are going to be rigid too, and will break just as easily as anything else. Or are they working on those too?

deelowe• 14 years ago

They are useful for curved displays too. With this, you could put a display on something round and as Too said, they are more durable.

JVIDEL• 14 years ago

I'm really looking forward to FOLEDs and other similar technologies, but then again I think the main problem is that nobody (as far as I know) has solved the normal wear problem.

Sure there are demos where they hit on of these film/screens with a shoe and nothing happens, but when I saw Samsung's flexible tablet video you could clearly see how the section that folded was already damaged, like an old book cover that's about to crack.

Whoever solves this is golden, high-scale manufacturing AFAIK has already been solved by HPLabs.

LG begins mass production of first flexible e-ink displays

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