December 2012

2012 is soon over, now's the time to reflect back... here are the top 10 stories posted on E-Ink-Info in the past year, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. The new Kindle Paperwhite uses an enhanced Pearl E Ink panel (Sep 9)
2. Wexler's Flex One flexible/bendable e-reader now shipping, on video (Jun 7)
3. LG Display starts producing 6" plastic based E Ink panels (Mar 29)
4. E Ink - not ramping Triton displays, expects next-gen flexible and color e-paper products in 2012 (Feb 23)
5. E Ink shows a prototype LCD/E Ink phone, says to expect such a device in 2013 (Sep 2)
6. Ynvisible's electrochromics transparent flexible display hands on review (Aug 10)
7. Samsung to start mass producing Electrowetting panels in 2013? (Mar 22)
8. E Ink shipping Triton (color) panels to Amazon? (Feb 20)
9. Coop Denmark to launch ZBD's Bistable LCD e-paper shelf labels (Jan 5)
10. Bridgestone to withdraw from the e-paper business (May 15)

Here's for an awesome 2013. May you all enjoy the holidays!

Yota Devices (a spin-off from Russia's Yota telecom) is the company behind E Ink's dual-display (LCD/ E Ink) phone shown at IFA 2012. Back in September E Ink said we should expect such a device in 2013 - and Yota indeed says they will launch it in Q3 2013. Yota currently has a fully working prototype (called the YotaPhone) that has two 4.3" displays, a 720x1280 LCD and a 200 dpi E Ink.

Other features of this interesting phone include a dual-core 1.5Ghz CPU, 2GB of RAM and at least 32 GB of flash memory, LTE and a 12 mp camera. The whole phone weighs just 140 grams and is less than 10 mm thick. Yota says they are already in talks with US and European carriers to launch this phone overseas.

Our E Ink Persistency contest is over, and we selected the two winning ideas:

• Business cards ("no need to print new ones and throw hundreds of old ones away, when your email-address changes")
• Menus in restaurants (many people suggested this, so the winner will be the first one who did).

There were lot's of other good ideas. Some others that we really liked were the recyclable/re-usable labels for clothes / consumer goods, the free design game table, road signs and public transport timetables. There were some great ideas in there that sadly are not practical due to E Ink limitations - the screens are monochrome and cannot be made large enough for some applications. Maybe in the future!

When I wrote my post about E Ink persistency, I noted that E Ink has a display at their office that was turned off in 2001 - and it still shows the image correctly. A nice reader just sent me the following photo, showing an Active-Matrix E Ink display that was last refreshed on November 2000 - yes, 11 years ago!

This panel was developed by Philips, with the front panel made by E Ink and the back plane (AM) made in Philip' LCD plant in Kobe, Japan. The reader says that this is actually the world's first active-matrix E Ink panel, and is probably the oldest one that still shows an image. Over the years it has long some of its contrast, but the image is still clearly visible.

Here's a very cool E Ink display idea - PopSLATE is an upcoming project (trying to raise $150,000 at IndieGogo, currently they have almost $80,000) that aims to develop an iPhone 5 cover with an E Ink display:

In the beginning, they will only support Instagram (so you can show a photo on the E Ink display), but later on the will provide an API so more applications can use the screen. Pretty cool. They save they have "strong support: from E Ink, and hopefully they'll manage to raise enough money to start developing this.