E Ink begins sampling color and capacitive touch displays, on track for late 2010 launch
By Vlad Savov 
posted August 12th 2010 4:01AM
posted August 12th 2010 4:01AM
E Ink Holdings, the company behind the power-sipping screens contained within Amazon's Kindle and Sony's Readers, is keeping to its schedule for the biggest overhaul of its display technology yet. Color panels are reportedly now sampling out to device vendors and China-based Hanvon has already answered the call -- it promises to deliver color E Ink readers by the end of this year. Two varieties of touchscreens are also being prepared: the first is a capacitive panel to sate the kids' need to flick and swipe everywhere, while the second will include a pen-friendly digitizer that should make annotations a doddle (or should that be a doodle?). Better response times and reflectivity are also being touted, though the big question is obviously when this good stuff will make its way into mainstream devices like the Kindle. If you believe Jeff Bezos, that won't be any time soon.
Makes me wonder if i shouldn't get the newly announced Kindle.
@phandy
Ditto. Annotation feature would be especially useful to me - colour display I could take or leave tbh.
@phandy Same :(...I've pre ordered one cos this is a first in the uk but I don't want a colour one coming out the next month... Then again, this could be subject to delays and amazon may not be doing anything with it yet... :S
@Rickets187 probably you can highlight text in color using the color display? would be pretty useful for textbooks
@phandy Exactly. Of course Bezos is going to say its not coming anytime soon. It's like Jobs saying no one wants to watch video on their iPod one year before releasing an iPod that plays video. It's coming but when?
3d next?
@liuweneg
why?
@wickywills Because the global market is going through a phase where every screen must display content in 3D.
@wickywills cos this is the market trend of the future.
Awww... death of magazines?
Capacitive is your friend
Digitizer with E-Ink display
£200 piece of paper
E Ink President walks past a Calendar....
"What... it's 2010 RIGHT NOW??????"
Hope they make a Colour kindle with a touch screen.
That would be dreamy
Cant wait for colour eink, & the best use for colour eink is Digital Photo Frames (maybe the 3rd generation for the colours to be rich enough) but this is a start.
Defo going to get myself a colour eink e-reader, you will be able to but magazines.
@Newwales
I can... this is all very well and good, but I'd much rather have Mirasol... the color rendition will almost certainly be much better and the response time makes it useful as a multi-purpose display.
When it comes to technology like this, Late 2010 = 2011+... marketing departments work in 24month years (or if you are on the Duke Nukem Forever team, they are just betting on time being cyclical instead of linear).
@DBG Great big ball of wibbly wobbly timey whimy stuff!
Progress...
Moving...
Too Fast ...
Singularity, ready or not, here we come.
@Meekermoloko Progress never moves to fast and can always benefit from moving faster.
@Meekermoloko
This has nothing to do with singularity.. It's just a new generation of a display technology.
@samisax
Singularity comes in different forms and this one will bite us faster than you think. This is but only the beginning.
@Meekermoloko
Singularity is the point where computer processing power bypasses that of humans and they start to improve on their own design exponentially faster, turning Moore's Law into an exponentially growing rate of growth.
Now what does that have to do with color E Ink?
@samisax
I've read the books. I know what it is. I didn't say it WAS the singularity ... I'm not trying to define it using a dictionary like you. E-ink deals with technology ... and technology has been moving faster and faster this past decade and it will go faster and faster in the next decade. It's about the idea that we're heading towards a singularity.
And it's not only about computer chips ... it's about biotech, cognitech, nanotech, infotech ... all moving exponentially faster. You can't just design a chip with processing power greater than humans and reach the singularity ... if it even happens. Now, go find another comment and try to correct someone else.
it's just putting a slide of color filter on e-ink panel, very similar with LCD.
but without back lighting, the color quality of color e-ink display would not be comparable with LCD, no matter on color scale, pixel density and refresh rate etc.
the viewing experince between e-ink- and LCD-based display will be more critical for e-ink display market.
@(Unverified)
that's the same with printed paper also as it depends on lighting so it's no different for color e-ink
The better response times are the most exciting part of this news... that alone would be enough to finally tip me into getting a kindle... crosses fingers.
If I could get a color ereader with pressure sensitivity built-in, it would be the ultimate sketchbook.
I would avoid the first gen of this like the plague.
Color can't come soon enough...better yet, how about capacitive touchscreens with anti-glare!
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20100811PD219.html
What's funny is they're calling them FFS panels. No, not that FFS :)
Interesting sales and gross margin stats on that page.
I wonder if the colour displays have any trade-offs versus the b&w ones.
I'm getting a color ereader If it has magazines
this should lower the cost of the wifi version this holiday.
This much closer to a great comic book reader.
iPad is OK, but the backlight just kills your eyes after a while.
This is the death of Textbooks
I'm SO excited for a color reader, I can finally condense all my comic books!
I wouldn't wear a white shirt when demonstrating e-ink until the displays get whiter whites. It just makes it look gray.
If it does B&W as well as the current displays, I don't see a drawback, even if it's not photo quality.
@chispito Without knowing anything about it, I'd assume it won't do B+W as well as the current displays (or at very least, it'll be worse than the B+W displays that are available at the same time this stuff comes out in late 2011/2012). There has to be a compromise of some kind.
Personally, don't care about colour (I don't read comics... except Japanese ones... which are black and white anyhow), but the touchscreen advances are potentially interesting because obviously a touchscreen is useful for making it easy to buy books from the device (navigate online store etc) without having to go to ridiculous lengths such as putting a horrible, bulky keyboard on the bottom (hello Kindle).
Basically I wonder if they have now managed to make this touchscreen without reducing contrast... because it's not like e-ink has oodles of contrast to spare.
If this kills magazines, then it will also temporarily kill the two-page spread until a gapless two-screen color e-reader comes out... Unless you want to add a landscape rotate feature with zoom for the time being...
I am envisioning $50 Black and White Kindle and a $150 Color+Note taking Kindle......
Those days may not be far off. India showed that $35 IndiaPad is a reality. (News and video here on Engadget). It may happen that some company comes up with a $50 CheapPad for the US market.
Amazon will have to compete.