Royole Wants You
Did you ever dream of becoming a consumer electronics product designer? Probably not, but you can become one in your spare time for a mere $959, and stun the world with a flexible display application that will make millions, or at least that is what flexible OLED display producer Royole (pvt) is hoping with its just released RoKit, a ‘developer friendly toolkit that the company is hawking along with its foldable Flex-Pai 2 Folding Smartphone ($1,082, down from $1,344), the RoWrite Notepad ($99), and of course, the flexible OLED Tee-Shirt or top hat, that allows you to stream content, making you a walking billboard.
Flexible OLED Wearables - Source: Royole
The RoKit comes in a 14” x 10” Aluminum carrying case (with handle), which means you would be able to bring the development kit to work and continue your development project during your lunch break, and it contains a fully flexible 3rd generation 7.8” foldable OLED display with touch support, a 7.8” sensor module, an Android 10 development motherboard with Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon SDA660 CPU, an HDMI adapter board, Wi-Fi antenna, microphone board, optical sensing board, and power converter, along with associated cables, so you can prototype your device quickly and show it to friends and colleagues anywhere.
Rokit - Source: Royole
There are some caveats however, as the bending radius for your RoKit is 15mm (~0.6”), so don’t go overboard on folding your device and follow the advice given in the 7 page user manual, which shows how to connect the boards and ways in which you can fold the display without breaking it. Once you’ve got it all together, you are on your way to developing the latest and greatest flexible/foldable device, which you can submit to Royole’s ‘Flexible Future’ innovation design competition, which has produced award-winning designs such as the ‘smart helmet with interactive display’ or the ‘rotating screen application’
Royole 'Flexible Future' Design Competition - Source: Royole
Understandably Royole wants folks to develop applications using their flexible/foldable displays, and while rarely do display producers offer ‘developer kits in a case’ to the public, they believe that offering such will encourage the CE development community to come up with applications that will increase demand for Royole’s particular display offerings. While the company was the first to offer a foldable display to the public (really a developer kit of sorts), there has been little indication that its products have been selling well and in February the Shanghai Stock Exchange terminated Royole’s IPO application after review. A detailed review of the prospectus by an outside company revealed many questions about customers and product returns, and while that report cannot be directly tied to the IPO termination, there were likely too many unanswered questions in the prospectus for the exchange to approve the deal, so its back to new product development for Royole and anyone with a RoKit.
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