Cellular-Book Sports Rollable Screen

By Geoff Duncan February 9, 2007

Cellular-Book Sports Rollable Screen

Polymer Vision and Telecom Italia have announced plans to introduce the confusingly-named “Cellular-Book,” which—thought not offering phone features—will be the first device to feature a rollable display on personal portable device intended for digital content distribution. Unfurled, the rollable display measures five inches across and, the company claims, is as readable as a printed page in broad daylight. The display uses an electronic ink technology (apparently from E-Ink) on a flexible plastic substrate

Polymer Vision and Telecom Italia see the Cellular-Book as a delivery mechanism for digital content, ranging from full-fledged ebooks to personalized data like email, news, and maps downloaded via cellular (EDGE/UMTS) and broadcast (DVB-H) technologies. The device’s screen offers 16 levels of grey (versions supporting color and moving images are planned for the future), and the Cellular-Book will also have the ability to play music and podcasts. The initial models will store up to 4 GB of data, and Polymer Vision says the devices will get up to 10 days of usage on a single battery charge.

Polymer Vision is showing the Cellular-Book at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona next week, although there are no details yet on when the unit might be rolled out in Italy (or other markets), what it might cost, or what content services might be available. But we have to admit it’s a pretty neat idea to have a device smaller than a typical cell phone: when we want to read something, just pull it out of our pocket, unroll the screen, and wind up with a very readable display.

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Emerging Tech

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
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[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

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These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Mobile

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The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.

A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.