Color

Amazon announced three new kindles today, two of which use E Ink displays. The new Kindle Touch e-readers feature 6" Pearl E Ink displays and an infra-red touch sensor.The $79 non-touch Kindle 2011 is a streamlined version of the older Kindle 3 - with only 5 physical buttons (beside the next/prev ones, anyway). The Kindle Fire is a $199 7" IPS-LCD tablet/e-reader.

The Kindle Touch will launch on November 21st, but you can order it today. The Wi-Fi version costs $99 with screensaver ads and $139 without ads. The 3G version costs $149 (ads) or $189 (ads-free). The Kindle 2011 is shipping now: $79 for the ad-supported version and $109 for the non-ads variant. The Fire will launch on November 15th for only $199 - you can pre-order it now.

There are reports that Ectaco plans to release a new e-reader that uses E Ink's Triton color display. The Jetbook Color will feature a 9.7" (600x800) touchscreen display, Wi-Fi and an SD card slot. The Jetbook color is expected to sell for $350 and will be launched in December 2011 - which will probably make it the first color E Ink reader in the US.

via E-Reader-Info

Fujitsu is showing a new color e-paper eReader prototype - with a 4096 colors, 8" display (157 PPI that offers 8:1 contrast ratio. This is a linux-based system with a new fast processor (refresh rate of 0.7 seconds) and ePub and PDF support. It weights only 220 grams.

This new prototype probably uses Fujitsu's "improved" e-paper technology announced back in May 2010.

Fujitsu and Sapporo Shirakaba-dai Hospitalannounced that it jointly developed a clinical appointment guidance system that uses color e-paper. The system has began full operation at the hospital. The new system guides patients to examination rooms or diagnostic testing rooms and is wirelessly connected to an electronic medical record system. Patients can view in real-time their place in queue when waiting to see their doctor.

We're guessing Fujitsu is using their own color e-paper technology. Fujitsu announced a hospital registration system back in July 2010, which used monochrome E Ink, but the new one uses color e-paper.

A few days ago we reported about a new color e-paper prototype by Ricoh, and now we have some more details. Ricoh used a novel method which involves stacking three layers of electrochromic panels, one on top of the other, each reflecting different colors (yellow, cyan, magenta). This can create color pixels without sub pixels. All three layers are driven by one LTPS TFT.

The display on show was 3.5" in size (113ppi) with a 27% color gamut (NTSC).

Here's a nice video with our friend Sri Peruvemba from E ink, discussing their e-paper panels and color E Ink (Triton) displays:

Sony developed a 13.3" flexible color e-paper prototype (based on E Ink's EPD). The panel is only 150μm thick and weights 20g. The display features 800x1200 (75ppi) resolution,13% NSTC color gamut, 10% reflectance and 10:1 contrast ratio.

The prototype is made on a plastic substrate. Sony says that the key to high color gamut and reflectance was to attach a TFT substrate to an E Ink front plate with high precision (0.35μm), which reduced the margin between sub-pixels and increasing the aperture ratio of pixels. This is quite an achievement compared to the monochrome flexible prototype shown in September 2010.