Paper-like display in two years, says Philips Polymer Vision, has announced more progress in the area of rollable displays for the mobile-device industry.

The new 5-inch PV-QML5 rollable display has a decreased radius of curvature, improved operational and mechanical lifetime and paperlike viewing contrast.

These are major steps forward compared to the world's first rollable display prototype introduced by Polymer Vision in February 2004.

The company says that current process and yield improvements will enable production within two years.

The Polymer Vision PV-QML5 is an ultra-thin (100µm) featherweight QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) active-matrix display with a diagonal of 5 inches. When not actively used, the display can be rolled up into a small housing with a radius of curvature of less than 7.5 mm. With four gray levels, the monochrome display provides paperlike viewing comfort with a high (10:1) contrast ratio for reading-intensive applications.

Even in bright daylight, the display is easy to read. Using a bi-stable electrophoretic display effect from E Ink Corp., the display consumes an exceptionally low amount of power. It is thus ideally suited for mobile applications.Rollable displays are projected to be the primary solution to the demand for larger displays in mobile devices, without increasing device size, weight, or power consumption.

The company sees rollable displays being used for smooth, paperlike viewing in all sorts of data-centric mobile applications, such as text, agendas, e-mail, electronic maps, and multiple-data information services.