E Ink announced their new Spectra e-paper panels which features three pigments - black, white and red. Spectra panels are aimed towards retailer applications which will benefit from the extra color. E Ink will start producing spectra panels in Q3 2013.
E Ink announced their new Aurora panels, which are monochrome matrix e-paper panels aimed towards low-temperature applications. Aurora panels can still operate even at -25 C. It is ideal for electronic shelf label and smart cards applications in the retail, medical and logistics markets.
E Ink will start producing Aurora panels soon and the first panels will ship to customers in July 2013. One such partner, Opticon, plan to release IP rated freezer tags in 2", 2.7", 4.41", and 7.4" form factors.
Last year Qualcomm announced that it is no longer planning to mass produce Mirasol displays, but will attempt to license the technology for other companies. But it seems that Qualcomm is still developing the technology. During SID 2013 the company unveiled their latest panel, a 5.1" display with a resolution of 2560x1440 (yes, that is 577 PPI!). They are also showing a smaller, 1.5" panel with the same pixel density (600x600 resolution).
Mirasol displays offer a rather washed-out image (the color reproduction cannot match LCD or OLED displays) but the power consumption is about a sixth compared to LCDs.
Back in October 2012 we posted about an Onyx E Ink phone prototype, and now we hear reports that the company plans to launch this phone soon. The so-called E43 Android phone sports a 4.3" E Ink panel and a 1 Ghz CPU.
The company is also working on two new E Ink e-readers. Both will have Wi-Fi, a touch display, 4GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU. They will actually be Android (v2.3) tablets, limited by the E Ink display. The BOOX R65 will have an IR touchscreen while the BOOX C65 will have a capacitive touchscreen.
Two months ago it was rumored that Samsung wants to sell its electrowetting display unit LiquaVista which they bought back in January 2011, and Amazon may turn out to be the buyer. Now Amazon confirmed the rumors and indeed bought LiquaVista from Samsung.
It makes sense that Amazon is seeking a color display technology for its Kindle e-readers. It may be that E Ink's colored displays are still disappointing Amazon and they need a display with a wider color gamut and better contrast.
Update: We added a nice video of Sony' prototype device below
E Ink and Sony have co-developed a new plastic-based flexible E Ink display called Mobius. The Mobius panel uses Sony's flexible TFT technology, and will be produced by E Ink. Mass production of 13.3" 1200x1600 panels will begin in 2013. Those 13.3" panels will weigh only 60 grams - less than 50% of the weight of glass based panels, and will be much more rugged as there's no glass.
Sony unveiled a prototype tablet that uses those displays - aimed for the educational market. The A4 sized tablet (13.3") features a touchdisplay with stylus input, 4GB of memory (with microSD) and Wi-Fi. The whole device is just 6.8 mm thick and weighs just 385 grams. Sony hopes to start trials in three Japanese Universities later in 2013 and will hopefully launch it during the company's 2013 fiscal year (i.e. by March 2014).
The Earl is a rugged tablet aimed for outdoor use. It has a rugged case and a flexible 6" 1024x768 LG Display-made flexible E Ink panel with infrared touch. Other features include a built-in solar panel, Android, Wi-fi, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS and AM/FM Radio. The device is powered by a low-power 1 Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory (and a microSD slot).
The Earl will hopefully be funded in crowd-funding campaign (using their own system, not kickstarter or something like that) - like several E Ink products lately. They aim to raise $250,000 and currently they have over $60,000 with 30 days to go. The price seems very low for the specifications, this one will be interesting to watch.
E Ink Holdings is raising money - the company will issue 60 million new shares. The current share price is $NT 21, so the company will raise about $40 million USD. E Ink Holdings had large losses in 2012 (around $25 million) due to the drop in e-reader sales.
There's a new Kickstarter project that aims to develop an easy to use an Arduino e-paper (E Ink) display for a uController (it can also be used as a standalone display). Thge projects seeks to assemble, test, ship and support a series of E Ink displays (three sizes). The final product contains the display, driver components and a micro controller - in one easy to use package.
They want to raise $6500, and they already got over $5000 pledged. Click here for more information.
Researchers from Canada's Queen's University's Human Media Lab developed a new morphing smartphone concept that can change its shapes to give notifications without any noise. The concept uses a flexible e-paper display made by PlasticLogic. This is just an early prototype, and the researchers estimate that it will take 5-10 years to commercialize such technology.
Earlier in 2013 the same research group unveiled the PaperTab - a flexible paper-like tablet, based on Plastic Logic's 10.7" flexible touch E Ink displays and Intel's Core i5 processors.
