There are reports that Ectaco plans to release a new e-reader that uses E Ink's Triton color display. The Jetbook Color will feature a 9.7" (600x800) touchscreen display, Wi-Fi and an SD card slot. The Jetbook color is expected to sell for $350 and will be launched in December 2011 - which will probably make it the first color E Ink reader in the US.
We're proud to announce our first Kindle game software: Nonograms. Nonograms (also known as Griddlers or Paint By Numbers) are simple yet challenging Japanese logic puzzle games in which your goal is to uncover the hidden black and white picture. Download this exciting game now for $2.99! If you like SuDoKu puzzles, you'll surely love Nonograms.
The puzzles contain a grid with number clues on the sides that help to reveal the hidden picture. The numbers measure how many blocks of black square there are in any given row and column, and the size of these blocks.
E Ink are showing a new credit card with a small E Ink display. It is used to display a generated secure transaction code with the press of a button. The battery lasts for 3 years. Apparently they're already producing and shipping these in Korea:
E Ink Holdings say that they expect to ship 20-30 million e-paper panels in 2011. The company is still expanding its production capacity. By September 2011, E Ink's capacity will be three times the level a year ago.
Here's a nice video showing a game of Angry Birds on a rooted Nook Touch e-reader. Unfortunately, the device is too slow for this game which flashes a lot and does't handle the actual game animation at all:
The Nook Touch (Wi-Fi version) costs $139.
Polymer Vision is showing a new flexible/bendable E Ink prototype. The display offer 800x600 resolution:
The company says that you can bend this display over 25,000 times (6mm radius). We do not know if they're any closer to commercializing this. The company went bankrupt in 2009 and was later bought and now they seem back into flexible displays, and apparently still working towards a an e-reader...
Sony is showing a new OTFT driven E Ink prototype. The 13.3" panel offers 1200x1600 (150ppi) resolution, 10:1 contrast ratio, 16 shades of gray and can be bent to a curvature radius of at least 5mm. Indeed had a cool demo showing how the panel bends. This panel is monochrome (they also had a color 13.3" flexible e-paper prototype on show).
Sony uses Peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) for the semiconductor layer of the organic TFT (this is the same OTFT used in Sony's OLED prototype unveiled in 2010).
Bookeen is showing some real time web page scrolling on an E Ink panel:
Pretty impressive, although they've already shown us smooth video playback on such a display. Now we're waiting for their upcoming fast e-reader...
Sony developed a 13.3" flexible color e-paper prototype (based on E Ink's EPD). The panel is only 150?m thick and weights 20g. The display features 800x1200 (75ppi) resolution,13% NSTC color gamut, 10% reflectance and 10:1 contrast ratio.
The prototype is made on a plastic substrate. Sony says that the key to high color gamut and reflectance was to attach a TFT substrate to an E Ink front plate with high precision (0.35?m), which reduced the margin between sub-pixels and increasing the aperture ratio of pixels. This is quite an achievement compared to the monochrome flexible prototype shown in September 2010.
E Ink released a couple of very interesting videos. The first shows a SURF (segmented) E Ink display printed on cloth. E Ink are obviously thinking about wearable displays here:
The second video shows an E Ink display on a Tyvex cloth - which is a very durable cloth (used as insulation on houses and for shipping envelopes):