There’s been a bit of hype around a new “rollable” electronic display being used in a device called Readius (Link). It’s from a company called Polymer Vision, “the rollable display company” and a division of Philips according to what I just read on C|Net (Link). I first saw this device yesterday on the Open the Future blog (Link) but didn’t understand how it actually worked; seemed a little boxy and I was expecting something with a cylindrical form at least somewhere in the design. Now that I’ve seen the animation on their site (Link), I’m less impressed. When someone says “rollable”, I want rollable. This is an unfolding, flexible display. Still cool, but they’ve made it less cool and disappointed me by raising expectation and not delivering on the promise.
Oh well. Next.
{Image Copyright (c) 2005-2007 Polymer Vision}
Well this is interesting. But I wonder if its a technology issue or a usability one?
Most people fold up their news paper in to rectangles and tuck it under the arm. Its a lot more comfy than a pure cylindrical roll.
I suspect it’s a material issue. I recall reading about the Philips technology some time ago and the minimum radius was relatively substantial. This looks a little better, so it’s apparently improved, but the implementation here is simply one fold. I’d not complain if it was at least two overlapping folds. But the “rolling” screen concept has been around too long and been too much of a Holy Grail to let them use that word for this solution.
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