Bridgestone is showing two new "tablets" called AeroBee that use the company's color touch e-paper panels. The panels are sized 13" (A4) and 21" (A3) - these are the largest e-paper panels around. Bridgestone will market those to businesses - to be used as in-store displays or kiosks.
Back in January we saw an e-reader playing video (by Bookeen) - and today we found out that someone ported Doom 2 to an E Ink e-reader (a prototype PocketBook 360 Plus). Pretty neat:
Apple filed a new patent application describing a new hybrid display that can dynamically switch between a full-color LCD (or OLED) to a low power monochrome e-paper. Actually, the screen can be operate in the two modes together - where some parts of the image is seen via the LCD/OLED and the rest via the e-paper. It seems that Apple recognizes the advantages of an e-paper display for actual reading...
The idea is to make a display that has "multiple composite display regions", each made from a transparent e-paper panel on top of an LCD/OLED. The display has several independently activated backlight units, illuminating the LCD panels when necessary (this won't be necessary in an OLED, obviously, as it does not require backlighting at all). On top of the whole device there's a touch layet, too.
Researchers from the University of California developed a new display based on silica-coated nanoscale iron oxide rods. Those rods align themselves when a magnetic field is applied and they diffract light into color. This display is very low power and offers great sunlight visibility. They released a short demo of the rods under magnetic influence:
This research is in early stages, but the researchers already patented the technology and licensed it to (an undisclosed) company to commercialize.
Update: We just got word from Bookeen. They say that everything is done on components that are available on the market with Bookeen's software - and they expect such performance to be available on the next-gen e-readers to appear soon. The power consumption, interestingly, is said to be equivalanet to a non-backlit LCD while running videos. The video, by the way, is a standard H.264 with no special treatment needed.
Bookeen's R&D team has achieved smooth video playback on an E Ink Pearl display. They are using a TI OMAP 3621 CPU (with its embedded software controller) and show a H.264 encoded video:
We don't know what are Bookeen plans here - whether they'd want to release a video-enabled reader or perhaps license their new technology?
Back in November 2010 we reported that Plastic Logic received a 'major' investment from Russia's RUSNANO. Today we learned that this is major indeed - the total investment will be $700 million (!) - which will be used to build a mass-production factory for thin, light and flexible plastic-based e-paper displays. Those displays will be used in Plastic Logicâs first commercial consumer electronics product, a next-generation electronic reader for business that is currently under development. This isn't the Que e-reader which was canceled in 2010.
The new factory will be built in Zelenograd, Russia, and is scheduled to begin production in 2013/2014 - and will be able to produce hundreds of thousands displays monthly. This will be Plastic Logic's second factory (the first one was opened in 2008 in Dresden, Germany). Russia hopes that this move will establish a commercial plastic electronics industry.
There are some reports that researchers from BAE Systems suggest using E Ink displays to camouflage tanks (they call it e-camouflage). The idea is that you place a flexible display on the tank and using video cameras on the back you can display what's behind the tank. If you do it all around the vehicle - it becomes sort of invisible. They say that this technology can be ready in 5 years.
This is actually an old idea. I remember there were discussions of using flexible OLED displays (and this was back in 1999 or so...).
Update: iRiver has a new e-reader too, and it too sports a high-resolution display. iRiver says that the Story HD is the highest-resolution 6" E Ink e-reader.
Hanvon have announced a new 9.7" e-reader, the WISEreader E920. They say that it is the first one to use a new E Ink display offering 200dpi - the highest resolution e-reader display yet. Check out this photo showing how the compares to a regular E Ink display:
Check out this video showing an e-reader (E Ink) platform based on Freescale's i.MX508 chipset. The page refresh rates are great compared to what's available on the market today.
A couple of weeks ago E Ink and Freescales announced that they will jointly develop a color e-reader platform based on the same i.MX508 chipset.
Freescale and E Ink have teamed up to develop a platform for color e-readers, based on the i.MX508 processor (which uses an ARM Cortex A8). This is the same processor that is currently driving E Ink's new monochrome display (the Pearl).
A color E Ink display prototype