Yes, the pun in that title is very much intended. Super-thin wrappable OLED displays are here, and this one is flexible enough to roll and unroll around a cylinder 4mm in diameter, while playing a video all this while!
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Sony has made this major breakthrough by using the new organic thin-film transistors that are used as the driver circuitry on a flexible substrate, making the screen thinner than a strand of human hair. The video released by Sony looks like one straight from a geek sci-fi movie. While Sony has displayed flexible OLED earlier, the gentle bending they permitted was nothing compared to what the new screen offers. There are numerous dead pixels and black lines on the display but that is common in prototypes. The details of operation of this 4-inch 432×240 pixel screen (which is as good as some of the phones we tested this month) will be revealed later today at the Society for Information Display conference in Seattle. What is even more surprising is that this screen is actually tougher than the rigid OLED displays, the strength being derived from its flexibility.
We are already drooling at the avenues this display opens up – can already imagine ourselves, standing in front of a mirror with our ‘print-of-the-day’ shining bright on our tees or maybe the equaliser of the current song on our PMP. We are loving this.