Sony demos very bendy flexible OLED screen

Sony has developed an OLED display that's just 80 microns thick, allowing to be bent round anything with a radius of 4mm or more - and to continue to show moving images while this is happening. The prototype panel is just 4.1in across, with a 432 x 240 resolution and show hues from 24-bit, 16.8m-colour palette. It has a 1000:1 …

[Anonymous Coward]

Innovative

Now this is what innovation looks like. Not crappy phones that can only now just do video calls.

[Mage]

Earth Final Conflict.

If this is on the horizon I won't update my E65 phone till this is in a phone.

10" x 5.8" display in a 6" x 2" phone. Yes please.

[Rich_Herds_Cats]

Nooooooooooo.

I wish they'd waited till I'd patented "Electronic ye olde style Scrolls with epaper instead of parchment that automatically resize".

Imagine the joy of linking that to google maps, then having an Indiana Jones style red line trace your route across the map!

[Mark Rendle]

That is so completely brilliant...

...that it almost makes my PS3 purchase worthwhile, insofar as it may possibly have contributed in a small way to the R&D that has come up with this. (Gods know it hasn't contributed much to anything else.)

[jake]

Fun toy.

But then, so is multi-colo(u)red sidewalk chalk.

Then we grow up. In theory.

Will Sony ever grow up? Or are they stuck in Toyland?

[Petey]

*Homer Drool *

That's awesome. Utterly awesome. So many different applications possible!!!

[PhonicUK]

Need to work on the reliability.

" even after 1000 cycles of repeatedly rolling-up and stretching the display, there was no clear degradation in the display's ability to reproduce moving images."

But there certainly seems to be a degradation in producing a clear image. The one in the video looked like a badly ageing LCD with the odd entire row or column stuck.

Granted this is very new and I'm sure they'll get that sorted - if only because nobody will accept otherwise.

Very cool though, I'd love to cover an entire car with this stuff, or maybe a suit...

[Anonymous Coward]

Prototype

The reason for the missing lines on the display is because it's a prototype and they aren't looking for a perfect product to test it with.

[horsebishop]

remind me

why we need bendy screens so much again?

[John Gamble]

Useful

It's a matter of space. A truly flexible screen could be extended while in use, then put away in a more compact form.

I for one am hopeful. Implementing this technology in a tablet-style computer would make such a device actually useful to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is excellent !

Well done Sony !

That's the biggest step forward in screens since CGA was invented.

[Sebastian Brosig]

philosophical question

will the youtube kitten video still be rubbish when nobody watches it because the display is rolled up in someone's pocket?

[Tim #3]

Brilliant!

That is truly impressive. I wonder if it can be rolled or bent in the other direction too? Either way it has a million potential uses in having a screen that can be just wrapped around anything or can be worn. Hopefully a digitiser could be incorporated too, then I can have a lightweight interactive notepad wrapped around my forearm & wouldn't need to carry a smartphone and/or laptop around all day.

[/\/\j17]

Screw all this pointless iPaid masturbation - THIS is more like it

Enough of this iPaid (through the nose) nonsense, THIS is more like it.

So you can touch your phone and, umm, buy a bigger (WTF?) - I want one with a roll-out screen. Now THAT is cool.

[Fluffykins]

Useful for political broadcasts then, with minimal discomfort.

While a political broadcast is playing, I can roll it into an 8mm tube, insert it into any available arsehole and let said political broadcast be viewed directly by the appropriate organ.

Twinkle twinkle little rectum

You get your thrills when you least expect 'em.

[Eddy Ito]

Want

Where is the queue for development kits? As an aside, I suppose the trolls will be off to patent every application they can imagine.

[John Smith 19]

Now that *is* impressive

Roll up while showing live video.

Organic, transistors less than 80 microns thick. A 4mm bend radius is a bit large but this is a *prototype* not even a product.

The 2 *biggest* problems with portable PCs are (and always have been) the screen and the batteries. Imagine 3 D cells with an end cap of electronics and this to roll out.

BTW I've *never* bought into the "LCD is low power" rubbish. With a substantial light source to generate the light and then throwing away roughly 60% because no normal light source produces polarised light. The power needed by an OLED Vs LCD system *might* surprise people.

[Hardcastle]

Possible application

I for one would welcome this in the form of a pull-down "projector screen" without the need of the projector in the middle of the room.