So before we venture into display technology, lets go through some features in digital displays that I came across in exhibitions, research papers and articles. These are 5 trends I saw that I particularly found interesting:

One of the hottest innovations in televisions was showcased at CES recently – LG’s incredible rollable TV, a 65-inch OLED television that’s ‘foldable’ – it actually rolls up out of a horizontal cabinet base. When stacked in front of your bed, it is perfect to unveil and watch television, and other times can be used as a seat and music player. All in all, quite unreal – check it out below:

Rollable & foldable phones are pretty mind-blowing as well since, in a sense, they can potentially convert a phone into a tablet! Check out this video to understand this:

Another interesting upcoming feature in display is called ‘haptics’.
With haptics, one can ‘feel’ the screen which creates sensations when touched.
Imagine buying a top/ shirt on Amazon: With this great feature, you could actually feel the cloth before buying it. A very interesting technology which allows the sense of ‘touch’ to be enabled on displays, in addition to visual (screen) and audio (speakers).

LG Displays showcased a whole host of features pumped into their OLED this year – from see-through displays to bendable ones. Watch this stunning video.

The applications of see-through displays are no-doubt interesting. Almost 60% of the screen surface is see-through, so displays can effectively be used in fast food restaurant counters – wherein one can view the display as well as the person on the counter behind it. Particularly useful in the Covid-19 pandemic as well- to create a shield between customer and store personnel.

The bendable displays have an interesting application in gaming too – they create an immersive experience for games, given that the screens are bent and aligned to the way we actually see. Check out the video to understand this!

This interactive virtual concierge robot is an example of AR at work, and was showcased in a recent symposium for Digital Displays. The concierge was charming, almost human-like, and interacted with customers socially about products. For example, she waved her hand to attract the attention of potential customers. She then had a social conversation and conveyed salient points about products, and answered questions along the way – just as a store personnel would do!

The assistant was actually projected on glass that can serve as a transparent glass ordinarily, and then as a projection screen for augmented reality, when required.

Given an advanced ability to interact, one can imagine the possibilities this opens up – contactless shopping, personnel-less stores, to name a few.

Many such applications around AR and VR are slowly unfolding.

This is a display system I am particularly quite interested in – of course, best known from the Kindle displays.

They are drastically different from regular displays, and bring forth their own set of advantages. The people at E-ink rightly point out, that the technology is not meant to be a replacement for digital displays, but for paper!

Its advantages like extremely long battery life, very low power requirement, no eye strain and artistic appearance, completely disrupt the space. However, limitations like able to only display images (not videos), very low refresh rate, and so on, make it placed in a completely different segment from digital displays.

In its independent space, e-ink technology is now releasing features of enabling colour, currently at 4096 shades of colours and around 16 levels of grayscale.  Great space to keep a tab on!