New Color E-Reader Tech To Challenge E-Ink Dominance

Technology Review reports from the Consumer Elecronics Show in Las Vegas that potential e-reader competitors to E-Ink are everywhere. The current market leader in e-book displays is greyscale-only, and it takes a long time to change the display ("turn the page"), so video applications are not possible. E-Ink says they will have a color display shipping by late next year, but it will be dimmer than the current greyscale and its response time will still be too slow for video. The wannabe competitors — Pixel Qi, Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Liquavista, and Kent Displays — all do color and some of them can do video (Pixel Qi, Qualcomm, Liquavista), and some of them (Pixel Qi, Kent) are shipping now.

Comments

Power?

[chill]

The big draw of E-Ink is that it only uses power when doing a page change. Do the color versions mentioned in TFA do that as well? If so, welcome. If not, nice try but fail.

Re:Power?

[PCM2]

The big draw of E-Ink is that it only uses power when doing a page change.

This was my understanding as well. So maybe someone who owns a Kindle or a Nook can answer me something that has bugged me for a while: Why on earth do these things appear to have screensavers? By changing the image when the machine is idle, doesn't a screensaver actually drain the battery where normally there would be no drain at all? Does an e-ink screen really need to be "saved" (i.e. will it burn out/burn in)?

As for the competitors, they are all designed to use very little power. At least one functions in a dual mode, where it can either be an e-ink type monochrome screen or a backlit color screen.

Here's another article, from The Economist.

Re:Power?

[Idbar]

A couple of years ago, I had the chance of going to a talk from the guys of E-ink. They showed the B&W and Color displays before the e-readers came out. I was amazed at the picture frame prototype they had, and always wonder what happened to it.

I'm curious about the reason they are holding back the release of color screens and waited for a punch from the competitors. I had it in my hands, so I know it existed way longer than the first Sony reader came to the market.

This is before they took that off of their website

Re:Power?

[Profane MuthaFucka]

No, it cannot be disabled. I wish it could be, but it's not a big deal.

I love my kindle

[LlamaZorz]

I have a Kindle2 becasue it enables me to read more than I normally would. Certain things I would only read online like periodicals and hack tutorials were not being read due to eye strain. I didnt want to print these as it would become expensive and wasteful fast. My kindle has really long battery life and I actually get less eye strain with it than with real paper books given the grey background. I love the thing, any gloss or color will just make the device cause more strain and that's now what I wanted.

I'd prefer higher contrast

[JakeD409]

A color eBook reader is something that will really appeal to my girlfriend (who has many art books and comic books). I, on the other hand, use my Kindle to read novels and programming books. There might be a little colored syntax highlighting in my programming books, but that's the extent that color would affect my eBook-reading experience. I'd much prefer a higher-contrast greyscale eBook reader. Currently, the contrast on my Kindle (and, from what I understand, the Nook and the Sony readers) is about the same as that of a dirty newspaper (about 8:1 I believe). It doesn't bother me, but I'd buy one that has paperback book contrast (about 50:1) in a heartbeat.