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Comments: 118 +- Mobile: Flexible, Color OLED Screens For E-Readers on Saturday November 28, @02:12AM
Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday November 28, @02:12AM
from the still-waiting-on-a-kindle-killer dept.
from the still-waiting-on-a-kindle-killer dept.
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hardware
nadiskafadi writes "Taiwanese researchers have shown off several flexible display technologies in an endeavor to promote e-readers and e-paper. One of the newest technologies from the Industrial Technology Research Institute was a flexible 4.1-inch color OLED (organic light emitting diode) display, which it claims is for the next era of portable devices."
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The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh for goodness sake!
The last thing you want in an e-reader is for it to be light emitting. There's a reason we're putting so much effort into developing better eInk displays.
The only people who don't seem to understand this are the ones who don't read much or haven't read much on an eInk screen. It's a huge improvement over anything that works by shining light directly into your eyes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I've always wondered about that. If you go back a mere 130 years, the only sources of emitted light a person would ever see (off the top of my head) were:
Sun
Fire
Stars
Lightening
Auroras
Lightening bugs, etc
Foxfire, etc
Fish (or were they too deep then?)
So everything the human eye ever saw was reflected light. Since the advent of the television, people began watching and focusing on emitted light directly, and computers, cell phones, etc have taken that even further.
So what, if anything, does that mean t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, until we can get E-ink displays to reflect color instead of just gray scale then our only option is light emissions biased displays.
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Even better is the Pixel Qi displays [geek.com], which have a backlight switch. When off, the display is reflective and at least as easy to read as an e-ink display. With backlight on, it displays color video with usable refresh rates. I'm super-excited about ARM-based color multi-touch net-tablets with multi-day battery life when in E-book mode. Pop it into it's charging stand, and you have a netbook with wireless keyboard. Our family may need one for each of us.
Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I've always wondered about that. If you go back a mere 130 years, the only sources of emitted light a person would ever see (off the top of my head) were:
Sun
Fire
Stars
Lightening
Auroras
Lightening bugs, etc
Foxfire, etc
Fish (or were they too deep then?)
So everything the human eye ever saw was reflected light. Since the advent of the television, people began watching and focusing on emitted light directly, and computers, cell phones, etc have taken that even further.
So what, if anything, does that mean to human vision?
Absolutely nothing, light is light, irrespective of the source.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you, Einstein.
Light has properties. Polarization, intensity, wavelength, etc, which are all affected by reflection. Even then, before the creation of mirrors, reflection was primarily diffuse, with the exception of the surface of very smooth and dark water. Simply put, there is an unbelievably vast difference in the property of the light emitted from an LCD panel compared to anything ever generated by nature before. Nothing was ever so pure and homogeneous in its precisely controlled variance.
My poi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Light may be light, irrespective of the source, but we process visual information not merely by number of the photons that reach our eyes, but also largely by the differential between them in adjacent points in an image... thus, a light emitting display appears washed out by a brighter light source because it cannot produce enough light of its own to produce useful contrast in the region of interest (the display). Even though such a display itself may be perfectly illuminated by sunlight physically, the i
Re:The problem with an OLED e-reader is the E. (Score:5, Informative)
That being said, the issue is that, often, reducing brightness also reduces contrast on light emitting devices. And when the brightness is high, it can wash out the darker colors, and make details hard to see because the light overwhelms it. Thus E-Ink is useful not because it's not a light source, but because it is a low brightness (when reading under reflected light) high contrast display, which uses almost no energy when the display is static, making it perfect for long-term reading.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I just looked at the settings on 3 LCD displays I own. They are between 45% and 55% brightness. Too much light being emitted has always seemed to bother me. I am curious what other /dotters settings are. I think I remember than when you buy the monitor, default factory settings are 100% brightness or close to that. I think it makes the display look better when you only stare at it for a few seconds (i.e. when buying it).
Re: (Score:2)
My laptop is set for 100% brightness when connected to the charger, and 75% when it's on the battery. I dim it down to about 50% or so if I'm in a dark room.
-jcr
Re: (Score:2)
The key aspect is how bright the light is
Just to emphasize this, even scattered reflections from a Class IV/4 laser can blind/burn you. Light is light, and bright light is bright light whether it is emitted or reflected.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think LED means Laser Emitting Diode in the context of display panels, so your point is somewhat moot. Staring into the sun can seriously mess you up too, but it's unlikely you'll find a superheated ball of gas in your Kindle either.
But just think of the advertising possibilities. Pop-up ads could be burned directly onto your retina, saving advetisers a fortune in bandwidth costs.
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Just don't stare at them too long or you'll go blind...
Re: (Score:2)
The moon was mankind's primary source of light before the advent of fire
You mean they were vampires and could not stand that giant big glowing ball that we call the sun? ^^
Re: (Score:2)
The moon was mankind's primary source of light before the advent of fire, and the moon can be very bright at times.
Primary source of light? What about that other one? You know, the really big, hot, yellow one?
-jcr
Re: (Score:2)
light is light, irrespective of the source.
This is true but misleading: surfaces are never 100% reflective, so the light reflected is not the same as the light received.
Staring at the sun is bad, not because it's a light source, but because it's a POWERFUL light source which is much brighter than our eyes are capable of handling directly.
It's also because it contains a lot of UV. The intensity would be enough by itself, but the total energy level is dramatically higher for the inclusion of the UV. The UV is not so easily reflected...
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You don't even see that, you see the light *reflected* by them.
Chairs, Tables, Buildings are not light sources (except possibly Chairs thrown by Ballmer, those can make you see stars).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Although, would the arc lamp be considered lightning?
Yes. A florescent light is an arc lamp
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No it isn't. Arc lamps feature an actual electric arc, but in a fluorescent light the gas is simply stimulated to the point where it emits photons, most of which are in the UV range. Then they strike the phosphor coating, exciting it to the point where it emits its own photons, which unlike those from the gas in the tube consist mostly of visible light. While a filament lamp heats the filament itself until it glows, releasing photons which are in the visible range, the light from an arc lamp is produced whe
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Despite the myth that invisible pink unicorns last for 100,000 years, in practice you'll find they die after about 6 months, AND cost about 3 times the price of regular unicorns.
Plus you can't dispose of the dead invisible pink unicorns in landfills, as they decompose into all kinds of nasty shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Your faith will be your undoing once the FSM comes back.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody who knows how flourescent bulbs actually work will tell you that the gas inside becomes a plasma. As a plasma, the gas conducts electricity, which pretty much precludes it from being an arc of electricity (though it does start as an arc, it's complicated).
To create an arc, the electric current must make a jump from a conductive electrode across a non-conductive space to another conductive electrode. The electricity super-heats the gas as it makes the jump, causing it to glow. This process actual
Re: (Score:2)
Have fun then... (Score:2)
...Reading and watching video in the dark.
If you want, for a small fee, I will come to your house and rip out the cables out of all of your earphones, speakers, phones and other devices that blare the sound into your ears.
I'll break your TVs and monitors for free, but ripping out LEDs and light-bulbs will cost you extra.
You know... for that complete passive experience you are obviously aiming for.
Can't do much about the smells, touch and taste without removing your tongue, nose and skin though.
But for a pri
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, iPhone's seem to be pretty popular.
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Yes, but the people who buy iPhones like shiny ... they probably can't see the display from the glare emitted from the neon pink case.
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I'd like both, so that I can read in bright sunlight AND in bed with the room light off.
Additional, I take it OLED can do video and full color, e-ink can't.
If on top of that the reader is foldable (but still sturdy), count me in.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a huge improvement over anything that works by shining light directly into your eyes.
Anything you can see shines light directly into your eyes.
-jcr
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Not if I can see it in a mirror.
OLED != e-reader (Score:2)
This low power, flexible, soft (but hopefully fairly tough) will be very much beneficial for other portable next generation solutions.
I would love a wrist-wearable phone that folds open straight to hold and talk and you roll around your wrist to take along...
Does anyone know... (Score:3, Interesting)
Did they ever solve the problem that older, flexible, OLED displays had that caused visual distortion as the OLED display was bent or is this still an issue?
Call me when they make OLED toilet paper (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought that could be done by printing on regular toilet paper.
Or are you suggesting that you'd wipe your ass on the same OLED ply hundreds of thousands of times? That's... really unhygienic and gross, man.
When I was a kid, looking at the crappy. . . (Score:2, Interesting)
When I was a kid in drafting class at my old highschool I thought to myself. . , "One day in the F*U*T*U*R*E this big drafting board will be digital! Won't that be cool? Where you can have a digital air brush and a digital pencil, etc. That'll be cool! I REALLY want to see that. Everything feels a little wrong with that not being in existence."
Well, we're getting closer to that reality. Some of the Wacom technology these days is getting pretty impressive, if still clunky.
Anyway, I half-really believe
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder what happens when I wake up. I hope the rest of you don't pop out of existence.
Yeah, like that would hap— [larsi.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Oooh. Nice. It would have been neat if they had continued to develop this particular idea, but it appears that the company abandoned the product back in the 90's. Even their website is gone. But I'm sure now that display technology has caught up to the vision that we'll be seeing more products like this, perhaps even for the conventional consumer market.
-FL
Re: (Score:2)
I was a draftsman too, for several summers when I was in high school. Back a few years ago when we were hearing all the hype about Go PenPoint and other "pen-based computing", I concluded that I couldn't get excited about pen based computing on a display that was smaller than a "D" sheet (17"x22").
Besides the displays though, we really need some improvements in UI for CAD systems. Autocad is wretched. Google SketchUp is moving in the right direction, but it's still got quite a ways to go before I'd prefe
No! Larger please. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is it they have to step forwards to color already? What I want is much larger greyscale displays with better contrast for cheaper. Seriously, give me a U.S. Letter size display with better contrast for under $100 and I will jump on the e-reader bandwagon.
Ah yes... (Score:4, Insightful)
The "I am the center of the Universe and all should conform to my unimaginative desires" approach.
Damn! I wish I came up with that philosophy first.
Gee.. Who would ever want a thin flexible display that could be bent or rolled up? Madness! Madness I say!
Naah... let's just make displays that are big enough and cheap enough for YOUR needs.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
isn't e-ink for e-readers and OLED for replacing LCD displays?
Re:No! Larger please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because that's a false dichotomy? They're going to need to go color eventually and there's no reason that research into both cheaper, bigger monochrome displays and color displays can't be done simultaneously.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Gratuitous Wiki Copypasta.
Since the 1960s the International System of Units ("Système International d'Unités" in French, hence "SI") has been the internationally recognised standard metric system.
Yet you still want an e-book that is 11 inches x 8 1/2 inches ?
Only three nations have not officially adopted the International System of Units as their primary or sole system of measurement: Burma, Liberia, and the United States.
Ah, that explains it.
How does it feel to be one of the 3 nations of the worl
Good, we need to push current prices down (Score:2)
I am hoping that current prices should come down a bit; they're currently priced as if they had some sort of "Enterprise Class Premium Edition" of an OS or something, but I feel like you're buying what essentially is the LCD part of a netbook, and an e-reader part of a distro.
The current ones *do have nice displays and elegant cases, but I feel I should be getting a Newton or something, at that price, or at least a beefed-up mp3 player built in.
Maybe I'm just missing something (Score:2)
Why does no one seem to want to combine these two technologies? It seems like the ultimate display would consist of a layer of e-Paper, followed by an OLED layer, and finally the touch layer. We keep seeing these video demos of transparent, flexible OLED screens which would be ideal for this purpose, but few actual products of ANY sort, let alone something transformative like this would be. Just set the page all black via e-Ink, then you can play the video over the top with OLED. All the benefits, the only
Re: (Score:2)
Reads to me like you have a product idea right there...