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E Ink Unveils Color E-Reader Display
Kensai7 writes with news that E Ink, the company who builds the displays used in Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and Sony's Reader, has launched a color version of their e-reader screens. It will first be used by a Chinese company called Hanvon Technology. Other companies will be watching and evaluating how well it works before integrating it into their own designs. Quoting:
"Unlike an LCD screen, the colors are muted, as if one were looking at a faded color photograph. In addition, E Ink cannot handle full-motion video. At best, it can show simple animations. These are reasons Amazon, Sony and the other major e-reader makers are not yet embracing it. Amazon says it will offer color E Ink when it is ready; the company sees color as useful in cookbooks and children’s books, and it offers these books in color through its Kindle application for LCD devices. Sony is also taking a wait-and-see approach."
It says the big US companies are waiting to see whether it will be useful for cookbooks and children's books, but wouldn't the color aspect of it have an immediate market with the magazines and periodicals that those same companies are pushing so hard to distribute on their devices?
Common Sense isn't as Common as people think...
The quality of the colour is why they're not using it yet. Black and white e-ink is significantly better than the original versions of the product. Only in the last generation or two has it approached print quality in terms of contrast ratio. Undoubtedly, the same will be true of colour e-ink for a while. Presumably, Amazon and others will wait for a generation or two for the technology to improve sufficiently.
The article is not currently behind a pay-wall, and does not currently require registration. But then, you knew that, because you only complained about this after trying to access the article, right?
As far as I know, newer sony readers (PRS-350 and 650) do use pearl displays.