E Ink - Page 25

E Ink produced several E Ink phone prototypes (only five of those, in fact), and Engadget posted a short hands-on review of one of them. These are Android (V2.3.5) phones with a touch E Ink display. The prototype is buggy and slow, and obviously not intended to be released as a product - but rather as a tool for partners to play with and use to build devices with:

E Ink also gave the Engadget guys a chance to play with a flexible E Ink display, you can read more about it in the source link below.

Back in December 2013, Yota Devices presented the YotaPhone - the smartphone with two 4.3" displays, a 720x1280 LCD and a 200 dpi E Ink. The company said they will production in Q3 2013, and today they announced that it signed a production deal with Singapore's Hi-P international (a company that produced Amazon's e-readers and other Apple and RIM products).

Yotaphone also announced it is opening a Singapore-based R&D center - to work on future Yotaphone generations.

E Ink reports that their (unaudited) January 2013 revenues totaled NT$2.57 billion (almost $87 million) - a 82% increase compared to January 2012. The company says that the e-reader market segment remains strong and LCD sales "met expectations". The company's chairman says that their diversification efforts are showing traction in the areas of Mobile Phones, Wrist Watches, Electronic Shelf Labels and others.

E Ink was exhibiting at FlexTech 2013 conference, showing off the latest flexible and color E Ink panels and prototypes. Nothing new here, but a good intro to E Ink's current technology:

Plastic Logic and SERELC developed together a new low-power outdoor digital signage solution based on Plastic Logic's flexible plastic displays. Each ZED (Zero Energy Display) unit consists of two 10.7" monochrome flexible plastic displays.

Plastic Logic says that the two displays have been "seamlessly tiled together", although the photo they released shows otherwise. In any case, the final display acts like a single 15.4" diagonal (150 dpi) panel that weighs just 115 grams and is less than 1 cm in thickness.

Pebble's E Ink watch started shipping to Kickstarter backers last week and Engadget already posted a review - a very positive one in fact. That say that it's been a pleasure to use and the implemented features work well - although functionality (currently) is quite limited. It's also an excellent value according to Engadget, especially for early Kickstarter backers.

E Ink is showing some new color Triton (Gen 2) E Ink prototypes, including one with front light. The displays are getting better, they say it's now almost like LCDs. Even though quality is better, and production costs have gone done, E Ink still does not see mass adoption of these panels by e-reader makers any time soon.

E Ink managed to get the color filters closer to the E Ink microcapsules, which means that more light is reflected from the displays. Coupled with the front-light technologies, the displays look better then before.

CST is showing their new CST-01 ultra-thin, flexible E Ink watch. The whole device is just 0.8 mm thick and weighs just 12 grams. It can full charge in 10 minutes (and runs for about one month). The lifespan is said to be about 15 years. Here's our friend Sriram Peruvemba (E Ink's marketing chief) showing this very cool phone:

CST just raised over $300,000 on Kickstarter to start production (the project goal of $200,000 was reached within 48 hours).

We're happy and proud to announce that after over a year in development, our second Kindle software title has been released. Utility Kit is a collection of must-have applications for your Kindle, which can enhance your reading experience and make your life easier. It includes seven different applications:

• Calculator
• Stopwatch
• Countdown timer
• World clocks
• Calendar
• Units conversion
• Notepad

Intel, Plastic Logic and Canada's Queen's University have collaborated to create a flexible paper-like tablet, based on Plastic Logic's 10.7" flexible touch E Ink displays and Intel's Core i5 processors. A user can use several PaperTabs devices at the same time, and these can interact between them, as can be seen in the video below:

Roel Vertegaal, a director in Queen's University's human media lab estimates that most computers will look and feel like that - within five to ten years. It's likely that the displays will be full-color ones, probably based on OLED technology.