November 2010

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati have demonstrated that regular paper can be a flexible host material for Electrowetting displays. These new displays can theoretically be almost as cheap as printing a normal magazine. They say that in 3-5 years this can actually be commercialized, but these estimates are always optimistic...

The researchers say that paper is the "perfect substrate" for Electrowetting displays: it's flexible and cheap, and shows the same performance as glass.

There are reports that PocketBook will release an e-reader at CES 2011 (January) - the first one with a Mirasol display. This will be a color display featuring 12fps refresh rate. PocketBook says that this is a mistake, but the information was included in an official PR...

BnF-Lab is showing a new e-paper drawing tablet this week. It uses an A4-sized e-paper panel, although we're not sure who made this panel: as Bridgestone, Epson and Samsung are all mentioned as sponsored, and these three use different e-paper technologies.

There's a new concept mobile phone called 'second-life' that uses a 'double-display' which is an OLED display on top of an E Ink display, and both are transparent. You can switch between the displays: so when power is low, you can use the E Ink to conserve battery. A nice touch is that if you're using the E Ink display, the degree of transparency of the display shows how much battery is remaining. The more transparent the display, the less battery remaining.

We're not sure if it's possible to create a transparent E Ink... but this concept design is nice in any case...

Delta Electronics says that 3D e-paper is possible. They just need to solve a couple of issues first (such as the brightness when switching from 2D to 3D). 3D Displays will be one of Delta's major development focuses in 2011.

Delta will soon start mass-producing color e-paper displays (based on Bridgestone's technology) - in fact they plan to release a color e-reader in December 2010 (or at least they planned this back in June).

LG Display is showing a 19" flexible E Ink display. It's only 0.601mm thick including the protective film. LG are using amorphous silicon (Si) TFTs formed on a stainless substrate. The resolution is 2560x1600 at 163ppi, it supports 16 levels of grayscale, it features 40% reflectance and the viewing angle is 140 degrees.

LG unveiled those display back in January 2010, and in August they said they plan to mass produce them "soon".

Seiko's active-matrix E Ink watch is now up for pre-order via Amazon Japan. It costs ?84,000, which is just a little over $1000...

LG is showing two new color E Ink prototypes. One is a 9.7" panel that offers 800x600 resolution: this is similar to E Ink's own Triton prototype (and it's probably based on it). The second display is interesting: it offers a single display in which the top 75% part is monochrome (1200x1200 resolution) and the bottom 25% is a strip of color display (200x600). Interesting. We've got a couple of videos showing the new displays:

E Ink announced that their color displays will be named Triton. They say that they will actually be faster than the current displays (by 20%) and consume only a little more power than their monochrome displays. Here's a short video E Ink released explaining all about Triton:

Hanvon will release a color e-reader in March 2011, and this will probably be the first Triton device.

AUO is showing a new 6" flexible Oxide-TFT e-paper, made on plastic (PEN). The resolution is 800x600. Hopefully we'll have some new details and photos soon.