CNet reports that Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos says that a color kindle is years away. Bezos says: "I've seen the color displays in the laboratory, and I can assure you they're not ready for prime time".
E Ink announced today that their segmented display product line is now called SURF. Over 15 million products with E Ink segmented display have been sold already, including the Samsung Alias 2 phone, the new Phosphor wristwatches, the Esquire magazine cover and the Lexmark jumpdrive.
SURF displays are ultra-thin, rugged and flexible. They are ideal for consumer electronics, medical devices, PC-accessory, display smartcards, capacity indicators, electronic shelf labels, signage and communications applications.
E Ink announced today that over 1 million E-Book readers with their displays are being used today. In fact almost all epaper readers use E Ink technology.
At SID 2009 (starting sunday), E Ink will showcase many such readers:
Update: We have posted our own review of these cool E Ink watches
Art Technology has released a new range of watches that has E Ink displays. They will be sold under the brand phosphor, and include 3 models (a curved watch, a curved 'calendar' watch, and an analog-digital style watch). The display is segmented (not active-matrix) - the total thickness is less than 400 microns, made entirely from plastic. Price will range from 175$ upwards...
Phosphor curved E Ink watchesAmazon has started to sell the eSlick reader from Foxit, for 290$. It has a 6" E Ink display (600x800, 4-level gray scale).
Foxit eSlick reader
The eSlick has 128MB of memory, SD card slot (it comes with a 2GB card), MP3 player, and weights 180 grams.
The kind folks at E Ink have sent me some demo displays. The first one is the Lexar Jumpdrive mercury. This is a USB drive that has a capacity meter. The E Ink displays needs refreshing only when it is connected to the computer anyway, so it's the perfect display. The display looks rather good, and it's a nice use for E Ink. The jumpdrive costs 9.99$ for the 2GB version.
Lexar jumpdrive mercuryThe second thing I got is the Esquire magazine with the E Ink display. It's a big display on the cover. It basically consists of several words and photos, and the display just lights on or off in all sorts of sequences. It's not an active-matrix display, but a segmented one. Ir runs on batteries, and still goes on since October 2008 - much more than they originally anticipated...
Esquire magazine E Ink coverThere's actually a second E Ink in the first page of the magzine (sharing the electronics with the first display). This time it's an advertisement for ford. This display is really simple, just lighting up a third of the photograph each time. It's not very bright, and actually not so easy to notice.
Esquire ford ad E InkCuttlefish are able to change their skin color quickly. Now scientists from MIT are working to create displays that are extremely efficient - using less than one-hundredth the power of today's TVs.
Cuttlefish use chemicals to change the space between membranes on their skin. The researchers have created an artificial electrical system that controls spacing between layers in their display, thus changing the color.
The prototype display is several inches across, and only one micron thick - inside there are around 20 layers of polystrene and responsive poly-2 vinyl. The poly-2 vinyl expands as the voltage increases, becoming thicker, and reflecting longer wavelengths of light. Without electricity it is clear.
The screen can also reflect non-visible wavelengths of light, such as infrared and ultraviolet, depending on the voltage applied. It can produce images using only a few volts because it doesn't create light, it only reflects it. In a dark room with no light, the screen would remain dark.
The researchers also say that the screen is very easy to make, but have a limited viewing angle.
Philips claim to develop a new ePaper technology, that can create color images that are about three times brighter than displays using color filters (like LCDs) - the closest an ePaper tech has ever got to printed paper, according to Philips.
Philips color ePaper prototypePhilips Research's approach involves turning the traditional electronic-paper pixel quite literally on its side, in order to tune it to different shades of the spectrum. The technique, which is called in-plane electrophoretics, involves suspending colored particles in a clear liquid and moving them horizontally instead of vertically. Each pixel is made up of two microcapsule chambers: one containing yellow and cyan particles, the other, below, containing magenta and black particles. Within each microcapsule, one set of colored particles is charged positively while the other is charged negatively.
E Ink has released a new development kit (broadsheet AM-300) with the new 9.7" display, as used in Amazon's new Kindle DX. The kit includes the display, a X86 processor running Linux, API software and sample images and drivers. It also supports MMC cards, Bluetooth and USB. It will start to ship be the end of the month.
E Ink 9.7-inch Broadsheet Dev KitPeople often gets confused about E Ink, and the relation to 'generic' e-paper technology. I'm trying to sort things out in this post.
I hope this straightens things out. Apparently almost everyone is actually using "E-Ink" to describe the company, product and technology used in gadgets. Amazon are doing it in the Kindle description page, and so are the BBC in a recent article.