E Ink is showing a new flexible wrap-around display aimed towards smart watch applications. The idea is that this will be used to cover the whole smart watch, and can be used to change the entire watch design.
Besides the design, this smart watch (band?) can display information, notifications, heart rate, etc.
Portugal-based Ynvisible is developing flexible transparent electrochromic displays and the company is already producing some displays in low volume. The company now launched a kickstarter project called Printoo that aims to develop an Arduino-based platform of paper-thin, low-power boards and modules. The company already reached their financing goal of $20,000 and there's still 25 days to go.
The Printoo platform includes 17 modules, including a microprocessor, a printed battery, Ynvisible's flexible, transparent display and a flexible solar cell. This is pretty cool stuff and it'll be great to see how the company delivers on their promise.
Sony is launching its 13.3" Digital Paper device to the US. This device, intended for the legal, educational and business environments will cost $1,100. Sony's device displays PDF documents and can accept handwriting input.
The Digital Paper uses E Ink's plastic-based 1200x1600 13.3" Mobius flexible panel that use Sony's own flexible TFT technology. Other features include 4GB of internal storage, microSD slot, Wi-Fi and PDF support (no other formats will be supported!). The DPT-S1 is 6.8 mm thick and it weighs just 358 grams.
Towards the end of 2012 we posted about PopSLATE, a IndieGogoproject that raised $219,000 to develop an iPhone 5 cover with an E Ink display. Today Plastic Logic announced that popSLATE will use their technology to their new iPhone 5 and 5S always on 4" second screen display.
Plastic Logic's displays are based on E Ink are are flexible and shatterproof. They use the company's unique plastic OTFT backplanes.
The Human Media Lab at Queenâs University in Ontario's new project, DisplayStacks, uses several flexible E Ink panels together that communicate between them using sensors to integrate them into a compound display.
The researchers explain that DisplayStacks basically enables physical stacking of digital documents via piles of flexible E Ink displays. With a conductive dot pattern sensor attached to the flexible dis- play, the system dynamically tracks the position and orientation of these displays in relation to one another. This enables several asymmetric bimanual interaction mechanisms for access and manipulation of information.
E Ink announced a new 1.73" flexible "Mobius" display, specifically engineered for smartwatch and watch applications. The display features a 320x240 resolution and 16 grayscale levels, and it can be cut into different shapes.
The first produce to use this new display is the Sonostar Smartwatch, which was announced at Computex, Taiwan. The watch was jointly developed by Sonostar and E Ink's subsidiary Transmart.
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.
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.
ICAP Patent Brokerage is going to auction an IP package of high-definition, full-color e-paper innovations from the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation, Yonsei University.
ICAP says that the IP package features a flexible electrophoretic display capable of displaying multi-color, high-definition images. The IP portfolio covers a grayscale representation unit with various charged particles for displaying grayscale by using light reflection and transmission. The color in the display is presented by using colored particles in an electrode placed above the grayscale unit. These colored particles are made of metallic nano-particles and formed in a specific pattern on the upper electrode for presenting a high-definition, multi-color colored display. Manufacturing of the colored particles or layers may include slurry process, screen printing, ink-jet, or nano-printing that may have high industrial applicability and is cost effective.
