New Phone Has Rollaway 5-Inch Screen

Telecom Italia and Polymer Vision have announced an agreement which will see the two companies launching the world's first rollable display enabled mobile device to market in 2007. The device uses a Polymer Vision rollable display technology which enables mobile devices to incorporate a display larger than the handset itself and offers a readability similar to printed paper. The product follows up on the rollable display technology based concept device Readius shown off by Polymer Vision less than 18 months ago.

While smaller than a typical mobile phone, the new device features a display which extends up to 5-inches and may simply be stored away after use by folding it, thanks to the flexibility of the polymer based display material. The device features the largest display available in the industry for the same form factor, the 16 grey levels combined with a high contrast and high reflectivity display for paper like reading experience enables comfortable reading, even in bright sunlight. Future developments include colour and moving image capable display.

The rollable display enables reading entire newspapers as well as books that can be delivered and bought through TIM's mobile network via a regular SIM Card within the device - and then stored in the terminal's memory which will be extremely large (starting from 4 Gigabytes available in the first models).

With the low power consumption of the display, the new device will deliver 10 days of average usage time between battery charges. Telecom Italia will exclusively market the innovative terminal in Italy. No comment was made about sales outside of Italy."

Posted to the site on 8th February 2007