Coming to an e-book near you - LG's flexible e-paper display

Like most display manufacturers, LG has kept a finger in the flexible e-paper pie. Now, however, they have announced that their six-inch XGA resolution Electronic Paper Display (EPD) is now in full production, and should be in devices bound for Europe within the next month.

LG's new plastic EPD, claimed to be the world's first in mass production, takes the form of a plastic substrate that is 0.7 millimeters (0.027 in) thick, about 2/3 the thickness of glass EPD devices. At 14 grams (0.49 oz) in weight, the new display comes in at less than half the weight of glass-based alternatives. However, the flexibility is what causes the plastic EPD to step up as a game changer. The rugged device will bend as much as 40 degrees from the plane of the display, will survive blows from a small urethane hammer and repeated drops from a height of 1.5 meters (4.92 ft).

"With the world's first plastic EPD, LG Display has once again proven its reputation for leadership and innovation with a product we believe will help greatly popularize the E-Book market," said Mr. Sang Duck Yeo, Head of Operations for LG Display's Mobile/OLED division. "Based on our success in mass-producing plastic EPD, we are excited as we look toward applying concepts from this experience to future developments like plastic OLED and flexible displays."

LG says it was able to adapt conventional LCD manufacturing technology to the production of the new product by reducing the process temperature of the LCD process to a level that the polymer structures of the plastic EPD could tolerate. The new display is to be shipped to Chinese ODMs, who hope to supply product to Europe by, according to the March 29 press release, "the beginning of next month."

Source: LG via Engadget

New e-book system promises a more paper-like

There may indeed come a day when printed books and magazines have been gone for so long, that nobody cares how little reading a digital document resembles reading one printed on paper. That day is not yet here, however - most of us still like our e-reading experience to be as close as possible to that of reading a book. To that end, this week a team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced the development of new e-reading system, that brings several book-like capabilities to tablets and smartphones.

Called the Smart E-book System, the "algorithm-based conversion technology" incorporates the off-screen border area of touchscreen devices, which is known as the bezel. By placing a finger or thumb on the bezel then sliding it into the screen (or sliding it off the screen and onto the bezel), users can do things such as flipping through pages one at a time, or quickly riffling through whole sheaves of them - forwards or backwards.

They can also stick a finger on one page to bookmark it, continue flipping using another finger until they get to a different page that catches their interest, then cross-reference between the two pages by virtually folding the stack of intervening pages back and forth.

Other features that aren't necessarily book-like include the ability to control how many pages are flipped by varying either the number of fingers applied to the screen (two fingers for two pages, three for three, and so on), the speed of finger gestures, or the amount of time that the finger is applied. Other functions can be controlled through different typesof finger gestures - drawing out a number, for instance, will take the user to the page bearing that number.

There is no word yet on whether any device manufacturers have expressed an interest in the KAIST technology.