E Ink shows off brighter, crisper, more flexible displays
By Donald Melanson 
posted June 1st 2010 9:46AM
posted June 1st 2010 9:46AM
It's easy to forget that E Ink is an actual company and not just a display technology, but the company was out in full force at the recent SID 2010 conference to remind folks of that fact, and show off some of its latest and greatest prototype displays. Chief among those is a new color display that promises crisper, brighter colors, though still not quite full color -- something that's apparently achieved by applying a filter on top of a regular black and white E Ink panel, which itself has blacker blacks and whiter whites than before. Also on display was a new "fully flexible" display (not color), and another black and white display that was apparently able to playback Flash video -- although E Ink curiously wasn't allowing anyone to film it in action. The folks from MIT's Technology Review did manage to capture a brief look at the rest of them on video, however -- hit up the link below for their report.
Yes! Enhanced monochrome!
Colour epaper photo frames please, as well as colour epaper tablets. Although liquid colour ink will be out next year with better colour & refresh rates. Come on 2011 show us you commercial versions
Colour epaper photo frames please, as well as colour epaper tablets. Although liquid colour ink will be out next year with better colour and refresh rates. Come on 2011 show us you commercial versions
@Newwales if you write it three time it will be true!
Considering how impressive and far along e-ink was in this market a few years ago. How is it that they are still not mass producing color e-ink display's yet. WTF?
@ttringle I haven't been keeping up with the latest advances, but all the e-ink displays I've seen can't even approach the refresh rate necessary for a usable computer display. Unless you meant full-colour e-book readers, for magazines or whatever.
@ttringle
They still haven't gotten it to work just quite yet.
I want to see some side-by-side pictures of the newer higher-contrast screens with the older version. It'd also be nice to see these breaking the 200ppi mark in reader devices, so text is much clearer and easier to read. The 166ppi stuff is OK but not very good. 200ppi 5-inch screens are a bit better. Better contrast and resolution would be wonderful. Then they just need to give it enough juice to navigate quicker.
@BubbaJ: This. Screw colour, I want to read books with it, not magazines (the web on my computer will do fine for that kind of content, thanks). Make the contrast better, increase the resolution, increase update speed; job done.
Improvement in this technology has been painfully slow; I hope they don't throw it away by jumping to a half-baked colour version that will still suffer in comparison with much more vibrant LCD technology. (Not that they shouldn't bring out colour versions - but I hope we can see serious improvements in the b/w version too because it ain't done yet.)
What's happened to PixelQi, that's what I'm wondering.
@e1212
Plenty of videos with Charbax and JKK on YouTube, but it's mostly getting ignored I guess.
Besides, Pixel Qi is still unavailable in real products, despite YET AGAIN awaiting "half a dozen" partners' announcements. I guess we've gotten 2 of their "partners" with Notion Ink and Innoversal, but I'm not going to hold my breath for them.
@BubbaJ Watch this:
http://gizmodo.com/5552319/ipad-screen-versus-pixel-qi-in-daylight-its-not-even-close
@Lucian Armasu
That's why I said "mostly". I was referring to Engadget's attention to it. I think Slashgear also posted one of the recent videos as well.
Too bad there are still no real products. There are prototypes and demo units, just as there have been for a very long time. It's just that now they're showing the wide-angle model and are discussing touch integration, while nobody is actually selling products with Pixel Qi.
Yes - that's great.
Even enhanced monochrome - all for it.
But when the f' are any of these things going to actually make it to market!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I don't actually remember the part of the "invisible hand" market philosophy which states the crap will just be invented and previewed but never actually manufactured.
It must be caught up in the classic failure there - that companies learn it is more cost effective to build crap and spend big bucks on marketing.
the colors do seem a little muted, but it's still better than nothing. i'm not sure why they're taking their sweet time with color e-ink.
I would like to see something else than the glossy protective cover so it would look even more like paper.
yeah i think this is a few years late actually coming to the market ..although im still interested
Yawn ... Waste of r and d.
@darthgault
Really? Why?
I love these displays.. would be cool to have one on a tablet kinda like the ipad.
Amazon, ...and you were saying?