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LG.Philips Develops World's First Color E-Paper
An anonymous reader writes "LG.Philips LCD has announced it has developed the world's first 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper. The 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It can be viewed from a full 180 degrees, so that images always appear crisp, even when the display is bent."
Now how about a damn picture?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Now you just know the advertisers are gonna get a hold of this technology and slap animated ads on cereal boxes or something.
Minority Report anyone?
i predict this will become a success since we can use it while lying in bed like a paper magazine and look at photos and stuff, unlike current monitors :thumbsup:
This just gave me an awesome idea: E-Paper post-its! Imagine having standard looking post-its around your moniter, or your office, or wired down to your kitchen (or, as long as I'm dreaming, wireless) that change corresponding to your Outlook to-do or however you wish to program them. That'd be rad. And some stuff tacked onto a bulletin board. I just love the idea of just tacking a screen to something.
The opportunities for this kind of technology are limitless. Really - books, notes, travel, magazines, anything can be digitized and made incredibly accessible.
Not to mention there is no doubt that the low power nature of it makes it ready for solar power, making it an incredible communication tool in non-power friendly places, like say deserts or jungle for military use. The fact that it's flexible makes it able to handle harsh environments - simply roll it up, stick it in a tube and keep on going. Computer on top of Everest, anyone?
Really, this is an incredible breakthrough and deserves plenty of attention; I'm not sure the market is ready for it yet, but this kind of technology will absolutely become a part of our day-to-day lives in short order.
Clearly, this new technology will rapidly sweep aside the many current applications of black-and-white e-paper.
Motorola is selling a cellphone sporting E-Ink display - it's rather crude, as the display is not dot-matrix but a segmented display (not unlike LCDs) sporting some assorted graphical icons. The kicker is that the phone sells well under 50 bucks unlocked and it's 9mm thick. Apparently, the E-Ink display is way cheaper than LCD displays to mass produce, and, since it doesn't need glass nor polarizer substrates it allows the phone to be this thin.
As for the device itself, it's a nice barebones phone, which feels very study. The display looks great, and i only wish they used a finer dot matrix display, as SMSs can be rather hard to read on it. I've been considering getting one for myself lately.
When I played with some eInk a few weeks ago it had a lot of after images. It's not (yet) appropriate for animation or video. But it is amazingly easy on the eyes. At first I thought the e-reader at the store was just a model with some fake image on the display, not so it was a real working unit.
eInk won't be replacing your PC monitor any time soon, it seems to only be practical for specialized users.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There are two commercial black & white e-paper devices available to my knowledge. I happen to have one.d er/
The iRex iLiad http://www.irextechnologies.com/ is the one I have, but Sony also makes one http://www.learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/rea
The quality of these b&w displays is phenomenal. The difference with colour or b&w LCDs is striking, especially outside and in full sunlight.
One reason they're not so popular might be that E-Ink is prohibitely expensive; they have a monopoly on the digital ink liquid.
Also a lot of people tend to think colour is very important, neglecting the fact that 99.9% of their book library is monochrome.