No, this is not a rumor, but based on the language in the press release, this may not be news based on incontrovertible fact. Polymer Vision, the spin-off from Philips Electronics, makes really, really cool rolling and folding displays, and they have announced they’re ready to start selling them by mid-2008. The catch is that release language suggests that they need partners to do that and will not be making the devices themselves. Feel free to read the release yourself (its Flash, so go here: News>Press Releases and select the first item dated 22-01-2008). You may see something in it that I do not.

However, they did release some details which strongly suggests they have at least a marketable reference platform ready to ship to hardware partners and developers. The device, pictured above, sports a 400MHz ARM11 processor, can support up to 8GBs in microSD format, offers “Tri Band/3G HSDPA”, support Microsoft’s ActiveSync and USB mass storage protocols, Bluetooth 2.0, and weighs in at a mere 115g. No idea of pricing or carrier partnerships. This could be very cool, if it materializes. In another release they talk about units actually coming off the production line. Go figure.

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