Seiko Epson shows off UXGA e-paper display

Those fortunate enough to traverse the halls of Embedded Technology 2007 could've seen Seiko Epson's latest wonder up close and in person, but for the rest of us, we'll have to settle for the above picture and a drool-worthy description. The prototype e-paper terminal measures in at just 3-millimeters thick and weighs only 57-grams, and it's even equipped with a USB port. Furthermore, it features a 6.7-inch display with a luscious 1,600 x 1,200 resolution, but the unit on display could only handle grayscale imagery. Also of note, the entire unit was powered by a single button cell battery, which enabled the screen to be redrawn upwards of 1,400 times (at 0.7-seconds per redraw) before running out of juice. Details surrounding its eventual commercialization were pretty much par for the course, meaning your guess is as good as ours at this point. Two more snapshots after the jump.

[Via Technabob]

[Bas @ Nov 16th 2007 9:49AM]

now that is sexy!

[John @ Nov 16th 2007 9:50AM]

Oh dear lord, MAN HANDS!!!!!!!!!!

[LesbianHam @ Nov 16th 2007 9:57AM]

lol they probably are a man's hands. (aka the journalist's)

[John @ Nov 16th 2007 10:04AM]

I know you've never seen boobies before chief but in the first pic that's clearly a woman.... with pretty manly hands.

[Mark @ Nov 17th 2007 12:54AM]

"lol they probably are a man's hands. (aka the journalist's)"

Haha, the second pic does indeed have a man holding the unit, it's not the girl from the first one, just check the ring.

John, you are an imbecile and quite rude. Go back to the nursery, idiot.

[starky00 @ Nov 16th 2007 11:11AM]

@ John
Do you know how perspective works, or do you only have 1 eye? I suppose you think the e-paper is shaped like a trapezoid as well?

[CraigJ @ Nov 16th 2007 6:06PM]

Different hands, unless she put on a ring between shots...

[Owen V @ Nov 16th 2007 9:51AM]

yeah, its just too bad you dont get to see the rest of her

[Jagannath A @ Nov 16th 2007 10:17AM]

e-paper FTW!!

[Sander de Regt @ Nov 16th 2007 10:29AM]

I wonder how much Epson will charge for the cartridges to print on this e-paper?

[WorldCTZen @ Nov 16th 2007 12:17PM]

Please tell me you're joking...

On the flipside, I wonder when the e-paper itself will be commoditized. Readers are useful for taking one item with you (school, metro). But for the office, having a 'printer' with a stack of standalone e-paper would be very useful. Rather than burning pulp paper while test printing hardcopy documents, just feed a stack of e-paper into the printer. When you're done, pass the e-paper back through the printer to be erased..

[SteveS @ Nov 16th 2007 10:39AM]

Engadget: how about an "Ask Engadget: Best E-book reader for the holidays"??? I need an e-book reader that does PDF and I need it before xmas.

[John Stracke @ Nov 16th 2007 12:56PM]

The Sony Personal Reader does PDF.

[suntiger @ Nov 16th 2007 2:14PM]

Nokia 770 - install Evince on it.

[Geert @ Nov 16th 2007 10:39AM]

second has a wedding ring, why are we even talking about this?

[Joey Geraci @ Nov 16th 2007 10:53AM]

And first picture doesn't have a wedding ring, why are you talking about this?

[James Yopp @ Nov 16th 2007 10:52AM]

The resolution is ... exciting. I have the Sony PRS-500, and the lack of resolution is MADDENING. I have very good eyesight, but if you take most of the stupid PDF's from the Internet, which are hard-coded to 8.5x11" (the screen itself is much closer to 8.5x11cm, about 2.5x smaller on the diagonal), they are completely unusable.

The issue is twofold: One, that even rotated into landscape mode where the top and bottom half of pages are displayed separately, the maximum pixel width is only 800px (flaws in the edge-detection algorithm for PDF mean it sucks at removing margins, BTW). The more important issue is that the stupid anti-aliasing algorithm makes non-bold text extremely light. There are four greyscale levels, and so imagine reading text that is approx. 10px tall, rendered in antialiased mode, with the antialiasing reducing virtually every one of those pixels to 50% or lighter. Reading becomes impossible. I wish they could come out with a firmware update to darken the text, or impose minimum pixel-width of lines for the font rendering.

So, if they can go to the trouble of actually testing this with a normal PDF, unlike Sony, I may have to buy it. The extra resolution will make a big difference, and here's hoping that the antialiasing algorithm will be much better, too.

[m.edgar @ Nov 16th 2007 11:13AM]

This looks like a beautifull eink reader. But what I'm still looking for is a pdf-reader which GETS RID OF THE MARGINS. Margins arre for print, not for electronic display, where the device bezel fills that function.

Also, a real, fully functional .chm reader; decompiling chm and using the resulting html sucks.

If an ereader doesn't have those two functionalities, all it's good for is plain novel reading...which my t3 tungsten does just as well.

[nathan.wong @ Nov 16th 2007 11:55AM]

I purchased a heavy (9 ounces) Sony PRS-505 because it was available today. If this lightweight (2 ounce) Seiko was available I may have purchased that instead. Since I read books and not PDF's with the Sony I have no problems with it. Also, there's a converter for PDF's to Sony's format available so not being able to display PDF's is a non issue.

The Seiko looks nice though. Too bad it's not small enough to fit in a pocket though.

[Robert @ Nov 16th 2007 12:16PM]

If only the Kindle were to look like this...

[mdm-adph @ Nov 16th 2007 12:18PM]

I want I want I want I want Me Me Me Me My My My My Now Now Now... *draws breath*

[Phil @ Nov 16th 2007 12:54PM]

Call me old-fashioned, but I want my documents like I want my iMacs - NOT glossy!!!

[John Stracke @ Nov 16th 2007 12:58PM]

Ooh, 300dpi.

[DAZA @ Nov 17th 2007 7:21AM]

298.51 DPI :)

[patsy @ Nov 16th 2007 1:00PM]

It seems these e-paper displays would be a perfect replacement for traditional status LCD displays like you have on countless devices. They can be much thinner, draw a whole lot less power, and can display the last status even while off. I'm hoping we will see standard 4*20 modules and such available soon.

[simon.nutsy @ Nov 16th 2007 2:08PM]

Ohh that is nice... Eink is realy started to come along now. And yes i DO want a good eink ebook/txt/soc/pdf reader with no restrictions.

I guess this display is a rev board style prototype for other companies to take ahd mold into there own ebook systems...

Still Lovly

[Gtaste2007 @ Nov 16th 2007 2:17PM]

Her hands are more stubby breakfast link fingered hands than say true man hands. Nice nail bed contusion though.

[BigD145 @ Nov 16th 2007 3:03PM]

If they're using a button cell, then why not just use a little solar panel on it like in most calculators that use a button cell. I want to read forever without having to be tied to batteries or a power grid.

[Daniel @ Nov 16th 2007 10:50PM]

That would be a great idea. A replaceable and rechargeable battery would also be good.