In the future, newspapers could be like today's dying broadsheets, except with an electronic display that loads fresh content on demand. At least that's what LG is envisioning with its 19-inch, foldable e-paper display.
DigiTimes reports that the display is almost the size of a standard A3 newspaper. It measures 0.3 mm thin (a little over one hundredth of an inch) and weighs 0.29 pounds. By laying a thin-film transistor on metal foil rather than glass substrate, and putting driver integrated circuits directly on the panel, the display is able to flex more or less like a sheet of paper. Or at least it seems that way from the photos.
My question is, does it fold, or merely bend? Also, where do the rest of the electronics go, like the wireless receiver, battery, memory, processor and storage? LG, presumably, has an answer, because an 11.5-inch flexible e-paper display is set for mass production in the first half of 2010. LG believes there's a new market for this kind of display, even though e-readers themselves are just getting off the ground.
I suppose it would be cool to have a big broadsheet newspaper that can easily refresh with new content. It might even be worth paying for in terms of a newspaper subscription, but the product also has to match the convenience of existing e-readers, meaning you could fold it up into your briefcase or at least roll it into a small bundle. In any case, anything's better than a continually growing stack of dead trees that you never get around to reading.
