Flexible OLED displays

Originally, I had considered making the music-based peripheral device out of e-ink with multi-touch properties. But, upon talking with Pat, he gave me some restrictions to consider, such as:

• The refresh rate for the whole screen is approximately 1 frame/sec. That said, if only a portion of the screen needs to be changed, it would take far less time to refresh that one section.
• The bend radius of the screen may be such that it will need a couple millimeters to prevent the screen from being creased, thus damaged.
• There are 2-3 kinds of monochrome e-ink available, though there have been recent developments in color e-ink

* There is a great summary of e-book readers that use e-ink as their display here

Essentially, there are limitations to the way the UI will operate and the way the actual product will look due to the restrictions on bend-radius. The Readius multi-touch, e-reader is perhaps the closest product available on the market that deals with this direction.

I have also been considering using flexible OLED displays instead. Sony and Samsung have both released product concepts that show off their latest Flexible OLED technologies.





*I'm not sure why the Samsung video continually attempts to break the screen (or shows it's flexibility) using a sledge hammer, but regardless, the technology is available and should be on the market in the next few years.

** The OLED screen is transparent and flexible, and the viewing angle range is almost unlimited. OLED technology has a number of advantages over LEDs, including higher efficiency, faster response times, and no requirement for backlighting. The devices also have very low energy needs.
(More information on the Sony Flexible OLED display can be found at PhsyOrg)

*** Aditionally, there are AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes) that are similar to OLED displays, though they control individual pixels instead. Samsung's blog has more information on the comparison between the two as well as a comparison to traditional TFT-LCD screens. There seems to be some fairly good positives in using this technology, and it is definately looking like a better option for this project, especially since it will be able to handle animations and other motion graphics much better than e-ink.