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What Could an Industrial Designer Create that Incorporates These Rollable Displays?

A technology in search of an application

By Rain Noe - May 26, 2023

in Tech

Sightful's Spacetop is a laptop with no screen, instead offering a massive virtual display via glasses.

Samsung Display, however, which is obviously in the business of making screens, is sticking to their physical display guns and developing technological innovations to make them attractive to designers. To that end, this week they unveiled their latest Rollable Display. To refresh your memory, last October they demonstrated this early version:

Competitor Lenovo wasn't far behind, unveiling their stretchable smartphone and laptop screens the same month:

And here's what Samsung showed this week:

It's a pity they don't show the thing in profile, so you can get a sense of the housing's dimensions. I imagine that'd be a crucial bit of information for the product designers they're hoping to inspire. What we do know is that the screen stretches from 2" to 10" in height (49mm to 254.4mm). The display is "rolled and unrolled on an O-shaped axis like a scroll," Samsung writes.

For the moment, this is a technology without an application. So the question is, what could you as an industrial designer create that would make this technology useful? The only thing we've seen even attempted was this concept by ID consultancy Unichest:

Got any ideas?

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James Henry

a year ago

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Looks like a great idea as a mobile display as much easier to transport than a fragile glass display.
Match with a Bluetooth folding keyboard and a phone for traveling.
As a mobile presentation display.

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James Henry

a year ago

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Looks like an excellent idea for mobility. For example as a monitor matched to a folding keyboard using a phone as the processor, or as a mobile display for presentations as much easier to pack a rolled up display than a fragile glass display.

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Metod Burgar

a year ago

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I've got an idea.
https://metodburgar.com/rollable

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James Henry

a year ago

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For designers interested in integrating displays into products there is the annual Display Week exhibition and conference. Unfortunately it has just finished (yesterday). Next year it will be held in San Jose, California. Display Week has the major display manufacturers as well as developers on new technologies. This year, in addition to rollable and foldable displays, there were also stretchable displays that could be formed over surfaces, transparent micro-LED display, color epaper and plenty more.

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