With all this economic gloom inevitably affecting business confidence in the industry, a small device, no bigger that five inches square, lifted my spirits. I might just have seen a dot of light at the end of the tunnel.
The device in question was a mobile phone display that folded out to double its size (see video below). Is this the killer application that will save the mobile phone industry?
A display that extends beyond the dimensions of the handset has become the Holy Grail for mobile phone designers.
High-speed cellular networks such as EDGE and HSPA may provide the bandwidth for TV on the mobile phone but few people are using it. The 65nm processor technology may provide the capability for 3D graphics and games on the handset but no-one is really sure whether anyone will use it.
The problem is the size of the display. You can get rid of the keypad with touchscreen technology and extend the display by an inch or so. But is it really enough to convince users that mobile TV is a must-have service?
Last week, Samsung gave the first practical demonstration in Japan of a folding active-matrix OLED mobile phone display, which in effect doubled the size of the display to five inches (diagonal).
According to Samsung, the display is 0.5mm thick and WQVGA (480xRGBx272), with above NTSC gamut 8-bit colour.
It was a bright display too. Intensity is 200Cd/m2 and, crucially, the specified lifetime is 20,000 hours. This is impressive for an OLED display, which Samsung credited to the display's "thin film encapsulation".
If this display has plastic substrates, as opposed to two glass substrates folding together, this is truly an exceptional lifetime and could turn the folding mobile display from a
long-term design target into a commercially viable product.
It will take a year or so, but should mobile phones with folding displays of 5, 6 or even 8 inches come on the market in 2010, the gloom of 2008 will be a distant memory as a real mobile TV revolution takes place.
We can dream, I suppose.
