Sony Debuts Razor-Thin Flexible Display

Mike writes "Sony Corporation has put online a video of their new flexible 2.5 inch display. The display can be bent in half, is full color, and is apparently relatively inexpensive to make. This could be used in hundreds of cool new products, as well as enhancing thousands of existing products. In fact, it's hard to see where this kind of display wouldn't be used, especially in portable consumer electronics. 'The display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said. The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market - liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels. Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough ... "In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."'"

Video

[ddgromit]

YouTube has a video demonstration of Sony's technology from Japan at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QbQugXy1A [youtube.com]

this looks familiar

[shvytejimas]

is it just me, or is this really familliar to the e-paper that LG & Philips developed recently? http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/ 14/0410247 [slashdot.org]
only this time there's a lot more buzz

Re:e-paper...

[snooz_crash]

R&D through several companies started in 1996. The tech name is flexible OLED.
A history of which can be found here http://www.oled-info.com/history/ [oled-info.com]

Re:Where's the video?

[ptrace]

Check out youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QbQugXy1A [youtube.com]

Re:this looks familiar

[Laur]

is it just me, or is this really familliar to the e-paper that LG & Philips developed recently?

E-paper can't display full motion video, its response times are much too low for that sort of thing, but it should have great battery life for mostly static images. This appears to be a "normal" LCD, but thin and flexible, and the videos show it displaying video. Different technologies with different applications, but both very cool.