Not-so-distant future Kindle-like e-book readers to have color displays

While many people love their Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader for traditional book reading, there are many users (and would-be owners) who are somewhat disgruntled about the fact that the devices are only black, white or grayscale. A host of media forms could benefit from a little spruce of color. And while their current screen designs do make for some powerful battery saving features, as these types of screens are sticky and do not require constant input power to retain an image, their gloomy grayscale outlook leaves much to be desired — especially in this flashy, “look at my graphics” world.

E Ink has developed a working prototype of color e-paper, which may soon find its way into a round of next-gen e-book readers. The technology employed squeezes colored ink from tiny reservoirs about 1/10th the size of a pixel under electrical force. This ink then sits above a reflective surface which, as in today’s e-book readers, allows light to pass through the ink, strike the reflective surface, and return to our eyes allowing us to see color. Another electrical force is applied to draw the ink back into the reservoir.

Today the images are of somewhat low contrast at around 55%. However, researchers believe there are no technical limitations which will prevent them from achieving 80% ratios. In addition, the pixel state change time can be measured in thousands of a second, with faster times also possible in future devices.

The developers of this technology are looking at possible CMYK or RGB/black display combinations which pull four sub-pixels into a single pixel group — similar to the way modern LCD/TFT displays operate.

This method of creating an image would be desirable for e-book readers because once the image is written, as in monochromatic e-book readers today, it is sticky.

Other color screens
Alternate possible future methods exist for creating extremely powerful, low-power transparent displays which can manipulate images in real-time on fractional quantities of power compared to today’s LCD/TFT backlit displays.

Sony, for example, as far back as 2006 (despite this report showing October, 2008) had demoed their small-scale transparent display. In this YouTube video, the transparent screen is shown displaying simple moving images. While it would be easy to think this is a joke, it is quite real and very much in line with future product goals. Note: An earlier 2006 video showed something similar on a flexible plastic substrate, though some of the pixel lines were visibly damaged preventing the image from being perfect.

Earlier this year, Samsung demonstrated a near-production ready 4.3″ OLED transparent display, which was targeted at possible in-car GPS applications. An additional demoed folding screen allows for a huge display area to be safely tucked away inside of a device which opens, like a mini-netbook. Samsung was targeting 1 to 1.5 years for these OLED displays.

Read more at Ars Technica.

Rick’s Opinion

Flexible transparent displays are coming, and they will be pervasive with built-in touch-screen technology, all about as thick as a sheet of plexiglass today.

I remember when I bought an $800+ 21″ tube-based monitor for 1600 x 1200 SVGA resolutions. The thing weighed 75 lbs and was about 1.5 feet deep. Today, I’m using a 24″ Samsung 244-series flat-screen monitor. Tomorrow, it will be akin to a sheet of glass. I wonder what comes after that?