This week LG.Philips LCD announced that it is first in the world to develop and launch a 14.1-inch size flexible display. Dubbed "technology e-paper," the LG.Philips display uses technology from E-Ink Corp., and is able to produce 4,096 colors. The technology was only previously available in grayscale.

LG.Philips says that it's able to achieve flexibility from using a thin metal foil as the back lining for the display, whereas thin glass was previously used. Using thin foil, the display is able to be bent and then recover its original shape.

The flexible displays are thin and resistant to curve damage. The biggest benefit according to LG.Philips is power savings. Because of the way E-ink works, the display only uses power when the image changes, allowing a static picture to hold for a long period of time without requiring power.

Despite being first, LG.Philips is not the only company this week to announce a flexible color display. A company in France called Nemoptic announced today a 14.1-inch e-paper display of its own. Nemoptic says that its display is capable of resolutions up to 1650x2340 -- somewhat close to 4 megapixels -- giving users approximately 200 dpi of resolution. Judging from the specifications, the Nemoptic display is identical to LG.Philips' unit.

Currently, the technology behind E-ink is too slow to display motion picture such as video at a reasonable speed for watching. According to specifications, the screens are only capable of a refresh rate of slightly less than one second. Considering that decent video requires somewhere in the range of 24 to 30 frames per second, E-paper still requires development.

Both LG.Philips and Nemoptic indicate that they are shipping samples to manufacturers and consumers should see the technology available in the market sometime in 2008.