We’ve been encountering news of a number of flexible screens based on “e-ink” and plastic substrates, but flexible color displays have been on the scene only a few months. The examples available are still nowhere near the color gamut and performance of standard LCDs, but improvement is constant, plus cost doesn’t seem to be a problematic factor.

                                             Imagine bringing this along somewhere. I can't.

Enter the 10.4” flexible color LCD, made by the Taiwanese company Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) as a technological demonstration. As it is, the product can only reproduce roughly half the colors a regular LCD is capable of, which equates to roughly to 8 million colors (16.2 million on a regular LCD) – which may sound like a lot, but is perceivably blander when compared to the full spectrum.

                                             Hopefully, development will soon produce a nice 30" version.

Still, it is a developing technology, and to put things into perspective, it was not 10 years ago when LCD was considered as inferior to the CRT monitors of yore when it comes to color reproduction, response time, and clarity. The flexible LCD screen is at the point of time where things are looking up with the technology, but a practical and marketable solution is yet to be developed.

                                             Won't be long before this doesn't sound like a joke anymore.

When the time comes that products like the ITRI’s flexible screen becomes viable, we can look forward to bringing along a super-thin UMPC (Ultra Portable Personal Computer)  without a screen, and then whip out from our pocket a humongous 22” screen to partner with it. Or even a Micro-PDA half the size of the iPhone partnered with a 10” screen, or eventually, updatable newspapers that fold up and used again the next day. With flexible displays, anything is possible.

                                              The Samsung F210 may benefit from a larger screen - mbe the F290 will have a flex screen soon?

The black-and-white flexible LCDs are already quite useable though still impractical due to low performance. With more and more research and development funds poured into products like the flexible color LCDs, a large, widescreen LCD in your pocket isn’t too far off in the future.