E Ink: E Ink Agrees to Buy SiPix Shares

The combined company will offer a vast portfolio of ePaper products that will allow it to expand its existing markets and diversify into newer applications. E Ink’s ePaper offers the best digital reading experience. It is easier on the eyes, consumes a fraction of the power compared to traditional displays. It is readable in sunlight, lightweight, rugged and field proven with over 50 million ePaper displays being used worldwide.

via E Ink: E Ink Agrees to Buy SiPix Shares.

Plastic Logic Unveils a Flexible Color ePaper Screen (video)

There’s no word yet on when the new screen might hit the market, but I do know that it can display 4 thousand colors (4,096 to be exact) with a resolution of 75ppi. While that might seem awfully low, there’s a reason for it. Plastic Logic added color to their existing screen in much the same way that E-ink did.

The color is provided by a filter lying on top of the grayscale screen. The screen underneath the filter has a resolution of 150 ppi, and that gets cut in half because you need 3 pixels to do red, green, and blue. There’s also a 4th pixel which is left alone (it shows the white/black of the underlying screen. The RGBW are arranged in a 2 by 2 grid in the layer on top of the Plastic Logic screen.

via Plastic Logic Unveils a Flexible Color ePaper Screen (video) – The Digital Reader.

Amazon experimenting with front-lit display for next Kindle

With the display and battery life being such strong selling points, you may be surprised to hear Amazon is experimenting with adding a light source. In fact, Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch has actually seen a prototype new Kindle in action using a front-lit lighting method.

The result? Apparently the E Ink display is lit very evenly and softly. So this isn’t the same type of light you get from a typical tablet LCD unit. He describes it as a “blue-white glow” which may seem a bit peculiar, but could work when just viewing text and on a display lit from the front.

via Amazon experimenting with front-lit display for next Kindle – New Tech Gadgets & Electronic Devices | Geek.com.

LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays

The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024×768 and is six inches across the diagonal, which is comparable to the Kindle and Nook. Because it’s made of plastic and not glass, though, the LG display is half the weight (14g) and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing e-book readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG is promising that its display is a lot more rugged. The press release says that the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it’s flexible up to 40 degrees from the mid point.

via LG begins mass production of first flexible, plastic e-ink displays | ExtremeTech.

According to LG, the first plastic display-toting e-readers are expected to emerge in Europe “at the beginning of next month,” with the US presumably following swiftly after.