Tag: e-ink displays

Colour e-ink displays now appear as an e-reader product

Article PocketBook Color e-reader press image courtesy of Pocketbook

Pocketbook Color eReader Hands on Review | Good EReader

Pocketbook Color: eBook-Reader bekennt Farbe (Pocketbook Color: eBook reader shows its colours) | Computer Bild (German Language / Deutsche Sprache)

From the horse’s mouth

PocketBook

PocketBook Color – the Swiss brand will release a new e-reader with color screen (Press Release)

PocketBook Color (Product Page)

Video – Click or tap to play on YouTube

My Comments

An e-book reader available on the European market is existing as a commercially-available example of a colour e-ink display.

E-ink is a display technology that works in a similar manner to ink on paper and uses existing light. It only consumes power every time the display is refreshed thus making it more power-efficient. It also works well in bright sunlight due to it not being dependent on a light source that can be easily “washed out” by the sun. Its main application has been handheld e-book readers but it has been limited to black-and-white display.

There has been work taking place to have e-ink displays capable of displaying in colour. It has come through in the form of the E-Ink Kaleido colour display which uses the same e-ink technology.

This has manifested in the Pocketbook Color which is an e-reader that has a colour e-ink display.

This EUR€199 device uses a 6” e-ink touch screen capable of displaying 4096 colours, with a resolution of 1072×1448. There is also LED lighting so you can use this device in darker settings. For audio, it can handle AAC, Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files, which can be played through earphones or a Bluetooth-connected audio device.

It has 16Gb of internal storage and can use SDHC memory cards, not sure what size, with a maximum capacity of 32Gb. This handheld device weighs in at 160 grams, something that would be acceptable for that class of device.

For e-book readers, the colour display may be seen as legitimate for visual novels or books that have colour photos or illustrations. Businesses may see it appealing for distributing brochures and catalogues in an electronic format for offline reading. As well, where colour is used to differentiate or highlight text in a book the colour e-reader will come in to its own here. A classic example of this is are the “red-letter” Bibles where the words of Jesus Christ are written in red.

But I also see the idea of a colour e-ink display appealing to other applications like colour digital signage in use cases where battery power is preferred. Examples of these would include outdoors use or freestanding signs. Or it could be about working towards making e-ink as a viable display alternative for laptops, tablets and smartphones where power efficiency is desired.

What could the dynamic E-ink keyboard mean?

Article

This Dynamic E-Ink Keyboard Needs To Become A Real Thing | Gizmodo Australia

My Comments

There have been many attempts and prototypes put forward in relation to a computer keyboard that uses dynamic labelling but a lot of these attempts yielded extremely-expensive implementaions.

Why bring about a keyboard with dynamically-labelled keys? One application would be to allow a user to implement a language-specific keyboard layout without having to rely on confusing labelling. Think of a German-speaking user who wants to implement the “QWERTZ” layout or a French-speaking user who wants the “AZERTY” layout, let alone keyboard layouts for the Hebrew, Japanese or other languages that don’t use Latin scripts.

Similarly, you could see implementations like “function key” grids that have keys labelled according to the program or situation. The obvious applications could include CAD/CAM/computer graphics with one touch access to often used commands and shapes; retail / hospitality POS with one-touch access to products and transaction types; let alone hardcore gamers wanting keyboards where they can “drop” actions to gain an upper-hand on their opponents.

For that matter, there could be one keyboard design for accessory keyboards that can be sold around the world, able to be connected to a Windows / Linux or Macintosh computer and showing the layout for the country that it is used in. Similarly a laptop manufacturer could show up with a keyboard that implements a keyboard layout that is particular to a user’s language.

Here, the proposed keyboards would use the E-ink technology that is used in the Amazon Kindle or other e-book readers. This technology would avoid extra layers and the need to keep refreshing the display area. Instead the E-ink’s weaknesses concerning animation may not be of concern for this application and allow for a cheaply-produced dynamically-labeled keyboard or keypad.

Of course, the USB and Bluetooth “human-interface-device” logical device classes would need to be updated to support dynamic labelling for keyboards and the operating systems would need to implement this as part of their class drivers for this device class. Initially we could see manufacturers implementing this function with device drivers and other manufacturer-specific software but there needs to be the action to implement this concept as a device class.

Barnes & Noble beats Amazon to the punch with lighted e-ink Nook (hands-on) | E-book readers – CNET Reviews

 

Barnes & Noble beats Amazon to the punch with lighted e-ink Nook (hands-on) | E-book readers – CNET Reviews

My comments

Illuminating non-self-lighting displays

The new e-ink display technology is showing up a few issues here, especially with use in darker environments. The typical solution for dark-environment ebook reading was to use an accessory cover that had an integrated light of some sort. But it will follow the same path as the liquid-crystal display as I outline below.

Initially, if an application required any form of useability in a dark environment such as a watch, the manufacturer installed a filament bulb in the side of the display and this was lit up by the user pressing a button. Later on, in the mid-80s, device manufacturers used a LED array installed behind the display to backlight small displays like number displays. This typically provided a relatively-consistent illumination effect across the display area and allowed for such practices as changeable illumination colours, which was asked for with car radios.

This became the norm through the mid-90s until some watch manufacturers worked on the use of “electroluminescent” illumination technology which provided an illuminated display on their watch with very little battery consumption and an even display lighting.

Large LCD screens for video / data display applications do use cold-cathode fluorescent backlighting but have moved to white-LED backlighting as a way to be power-efficient.

Research that has been done

The current problem with the e-ink display is that it isn’t self-illuminating. This is although there is research by Pixel QI in to establishing a display technology that can combine what the LCD offers with the e-ink technology. This is to counteract the problem of LCD and OLED display applications being “washed out” in bright sunlight.

But there could be the use of a white electroluminescent panel behind an e-ink display, especially a colour fast-refreshing type to allow for a highly-flexible “use-anywhere” display that can conserve power.

Conclusion

Once we see further work on the e-ink display taking place, it could then allow for this technology to move beyond the Nook or Kindle e-reader.