New Sony OLED Display Can Roll Into Cylinder

Anarki2004 writes "Sony recently debuted its latest in OLED technology: a 4.1-inch screen that's only 80 microns thick. The super-flexible display can roll up into a cylinder just 4mm in diameter while still showing moving images at 432×240 resolution. Instead of brittle integrated circuit chips, the screen has an on-panel gate-driven circuit — a world first, according to Sony. That innovation would allow everything but the power supply to roll and flex in applications."

Everything but the power supply ...

[tomhudson]

That innovation would allow everything but the power supply to roll and flex in applications."

Good thing, too - you wouldn't want to roll up the power supply, shove it in your pocket, and have it burst into flames. After all, "It's a SONY!"

Re:

[frozentier]

I'm working on a portable power supply right now. I'm going to call it a "battery".

Re:

[tomhudson]

... and if you make it round, you can wrap the screen around it ... Quick, patent round batteries! Oh, wait a sec ...

What the heck, do it anyway - the USPTO doesn't give a **** about prior art - they're like Mikey, they'll eat anything you stick in front of them! After all, they patented the comb-over. [totallyabsurd.com], the cry-no-more that gags a baby [totallyabsurd.com], human car wash [totallyabsurd.com], pet petter, boob tube [totallyabsurd.com] and insect balls [totallyabsurd.com]

Re:

[hack slash]

My friend told me about this device that powered things without a battery, all you had to do was turn a handle. I thought to myself, that's got to be some sort of wind up.

Re:

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Yeah but the problem is that while they could make circuits in the screen, they certainly can't duplicate chipmaking control, efficiency and accuracy on the flexible substrate. So yes, you could have your next phone rollable, if you would accept a 6 Mhz cpu with 2 Mb ram.

Dude, you ruined my day

[Moraelin]

Bah, just when I was thinking that if it's this thin and flexible, they could put it on a condom and give you the choice of what to display on it (like, say, a $100 bill or a credit card for wives who won't touch anything else of their husband's)... you just have to come and give me the mental image of it bursting into flames.

So the real remaining job

[fustakrakich]

is to make flexible/foldable power supplies..

Re:

[spazdor]

I think power technology is gonna be the easy part here. Big thick (think fancy home-audio ribbon cables) copper ring around the outer perimeter of the device, with 50 or 100 turns of spiral around the outside. Suddenly every movement through the device's Z-axis generates magnetic flux. Mobile devices might self-charge if they consume little enough and the EM environment is noisy enough. The recharging 'docking station' could just be a little induction coil that you leave the device on top of or near.

As for

Re:

[fustakrakich]

For higher-capacity chemical power storage...

I can just go for a swim [cbsnews.com]

Re:

[spazdor]

Now there's a "layered laminar surface". Eugh.

Re:

[NicknamesAreStupid]

OK - http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20004170-54.html [cnet.com] . It may mean that you have to hold it up to the sun to use it.

Re:

[mrops]

is to make flexible/foldable power supplies..

..and to remove DRM

Until...

[Vanderhoth]

The super-flexible display can roll up into a cylinder

Until Sony disables that feature in the firmware.

Re:

[Sockatume]

I thought this screen was firmware. Would that mean they'd turn it into hardware?

Re:

[DarkKnightRadick]

Actually I think the screen qualifies as a flimsy. :p

Re:

[oldspewey]

I don't think they'll disable the feature entirely, but they'll probably require you to buy some kind of expensive, proprietary cylinder that you wrap the screen around.

That's nice and all

[NotSoHeavyD3]

But when are they going to be able to make 40" TV's that are affordable with OLED? (Hell, I thought a few years ago the shtick was that they could print them out so cheaply you would just make a new OLED every so often if anything went wrong with the screen.)

Re:those stripes

[illumastorm]

Those stripes are probably an artifact from the screen being rolled up. That should be ironed out if/when the screen goes into production.

Re:those stripes

[aynoknman]

Those stripes are probably an artifact from the screen being rolled up. That should be ironed out if/when the screen goes into production.

So long as you don't have to iron out the screen after you roll it up.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw similar stripes in early HD displays and then in early OLED displays when i would see prototype footage. I think it's more likely that they are minor problems with the way the screen lights up pixels on a grid. And it should certainly be fixed before production.

Re:

[lowestuid]

I have a hard time accepting the claim "it can be rolled around" when it clearly damaged the display doing that. Most of the stripes showed up AFTER they rolled it a couple times.

Really? Like maybe a Pencil?

[decipher_saint]

Really can it be rolled around a pencil? [slashdot.org]

Re:

[Get on the boat]

This one is vastly improved from 80m. That's several orders of magnitude.

Re:

[mister_playboy]

80m.

Slashdot ate your mu?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot ate your mu?

It's OK, it tasted like chicken.

/.

Re:

[hellop2]

No. He's referencing this dupe from last week. [slashdot.org]

tag story as dupe

[Somegeek]

what he said

Re:

[skids]

No typos please. Tagging as "dube" might result in stoners using it for rolling paper. My guess is it's not very healthy to smoke.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying it's an OLED story?

Re:

[OzPeter]

You know I have no problem with /. rejecting my original submissions .. until you get to things like this dupe which happened within the last week. That really pisses me off.

Gratuitous rejected submission links

• Volvo Introduces a Collision Proof Car [slashdot.org]
• New Volvo crashes in safety demo [drive.com.au]

Re:

[MadUndergrad]

Pretty sure I saw that second one on /. I think the main problem is the Slashdot search feature sucks funky monkey balls.

Re:

[OzPeter]

Pretty sure I saw that second one on /. I think the main problem is the Slashdot search feature sucks funky monkey balls.

You're right I just found it - under idle. I take it all back, slashdot is wonderful. But I know I tried to search for anything to do with Volvo before submitting and didn't come up with anything. Now I also see how my search failed - epic UI failure IMHO

Re:

[strack]

you should write a letter to the editor about it. cause the rest of us dont fucking care. we really, really, dont.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

[May 17, 2005]
Universal Display Expands Capabilities for Flexible Displays with Novel OLED Deposition Equipment from Tokki Corporation and Hitachi High-Technologies
EWING, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- May 17, 2005 --

Universal Display Furthers 'Flexible OLED Initiative' and Expands Prototype Capacity with Full-Color OLED Deposition System for OLED Displays on Plastic, Metallic Foil, and Glass Substrates

[...]

Universal Display Corporation is a world leader in developing and commercializing innovative OLED technol

Dual screen

[The Living Fractal]

OK so I imagine that the technology doesn't really fit well with touchscreen designs. That's fine though: I want a device like the HTC Evo with a nice sized touchscreen in the portrait orientation but a roll-out OLED in the landscape which would become a widescreen for video. I'm thinking like 3.5" normal 'portrait' screen and a 8" roll-out widescreen... if they can figure out a way to keep it pretty sturdy when rolled out. That'll be a challenge IMHO.

Re:

[mdielmann]

if they can figure out a way to keep it pretty sturdy when rolled out. That'll be a challenge IMHO.

Not much of a challenge at all. I can think of three ways, with varying costs, weights, and effectiveness. I'm sure the engineers involved will do better.

Re:

[The Living Fractal]

Really? I can't think of many. The length of the screen would prohibit the use of simple rails that slide out of the body of the phone... they'd be much longer than the phone's width. I imagine that some kind of one-way-bendable rail that can roll up with the screen could work but that would be a pretty delicate thing and if you tweaked it at all you might be pretty pissed when your screen doesn't roll back up..

Re:

[tomhudson]

Really? I can't think of many. The length of the screen would prohibit the use of simple rails that slide out of the body of the phone... they'd be much longer than the phone's width

Three off the top of my head:

1. something like a telescoping radio or tv antenna
2. something like a folding ruler or cane?
3. something like a tazer AGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Re:

[angelbar]

Earth: Final Conflict ?

Re:

[OnePumpChump]

The actual prop must have had a workable rail, even if it didn't have a real screen.

Re:

[kryliss]

That's where I remember seeing them on TV.

EFC

[DigitalCrackPipe]

I was wondering if I was the only one who remembers (or will admit to having watched) Earth Final Conflict. The only good thing that really came from that show was the communication devices - they pulled the screen from a cellphone sized object to make a reasonably large full-video screen (like pull-down blinds).

The power supply doesn't need to by flexible to solve the old problem of balancing phone/device screen size with overall size when you're not using it.

After 10 years....

[theNetImp]

You think slashdot would put a "primary_link" field into the database to try to wed out duplicate entries. Put in an entry, if the primary link has the same URL as another article with a primary link then they'd get a warning showing them of possible duplicates...

Re:

[dsavi]

The source URL of the article already has to be unique, however, a source URL isn't always required. To quote it: Main url of submission (optional but if provided must be unique).

Re:

[Larryish]

Good point.

What is to keep someone from throwing an ?x=fubar on the end of the url to make it appear unique?

"theater in the round" ?

[vlm]

The super-flexible display can roll up into a cylinder

That'll come in mighty handy for my new "theater in the round" living room design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_in_the_round [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Miseph]

Hmmm... that gives me a neat idea for and IMAX film... stage a play in the round, with the audience semi-illuminated, and give the cameras to one of the actors. Obviously, it would have to be somebody in every scene. The movie audience now gets to experience what it is like to be on stage being watched by an audience. Very avant garde.

It could be really awesome, or really boring, or both. The first would make bank, the second would win some film festival awards, and the 3rd would make it Oscar material... i

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[OzPeter]

Thin doesn't really matter.

It does once you get out of your mom's basement

Applications

[alfredos]

The ultimate cheating device for exams: One AAA battery and some memory inside the pencil, the display wrapped up and a single switch at the top as the input device.

Book with video: Batteries in the hardcover and the screen like a first page where video references can be looked up.

Even just a good old mobile phone display that doesn't crack under deformation is quite nice an application for this.

Dupe from last week

[glitch23]

It seems Slashdot is back into the duping business again. I hadn't noticed any for a while but here we go again.

ClickJacking

[drainbramage]

Will never mean the same...

Imagine when it gets cheap

[Mad-Bassist]

We'll see things like bank pens with animation; the battery would just be another flexible plastic layer.

Red Planet - device

[sherriw]

Reminds me of the Portable PCs they had in the movie Red Planet: http://www.technovelgy.com/graphics/content07/red-planet-map-display.jpg [technovelgy.com]

One more thing I'm not going to buy

[erroneus]

... it's Sony right? I'm not buying it and I might consider not buying it from anyone else who is required to pay Sony royalties on the invention as well. If Sony was the only company that could make TVs, I would not own a TV. I really hate Sony that much.

Invisibility Suit

[hviniciusg]

Finally we can make an invisibility suit whit this stuff. Just imagine clothes made from this stuff then you could plug some micro cameras on the front and back and then display it on the suite front and back side, you would not be totally invisible but, given the right research and time we could get a pretty good one.
Just imagine soldiers in the sand whit this suit, or in the snow of forest. The perfect camouflage

Re:

[dfcamara]

Nope, for an invisibility suit you'll need different images for different points of view (observers).

Re:

[hviniciusg]

Yes, but you could get an excelent camouflage

Roll-Out Phone

[Doc Ruby]

I'd love to have 3x9" phone with a long edge that could pull out a scrolled up display to a full 8.5x11".

Even cooler would be if the scroll could "telescope" out like a radio antenna before scolling, so a few 3" segments could snap out to 8.5", and scroll out to 11". That extensible scroll could contain an 8.5x11" screen in a 3x3 package. Perhaps even a 0.5" thick package, if the scroll can roll really tight.

A real pocket sized phone with a real fullsized display on demand. Cool!

OLED isn't coming anytime soon

[JustNiz]

I'm fed up with all the baseless hype Sony keep generating around OLED. Sony have been showing various "in the lab" examples of flexible OLED screens for years. Decades even. OLED TV has become the "Duke Nukem Forever" of TV tech.

I'll only pay attention to any more new OLED stories when someone makes home-sized (52 inch+) OLED TVs at affordable prices (i.e. same price as LCDs) actually available for purchase.