China's Onyx is working on an E Ink smartphone running Android. Obviously Android isn't perfect on E Ink (no color, slow refreshes) - but this is an interesting concept and might be quite usable for some people. Battery life is said to be around 1 week, but this will obviously depends on how much you talk and use the phone.

During IFA 2012 in September, E Ink themselves showed a prototype dual-screen smartphone with an LCD on side and an E Ink display on the other side. This is a really clever idea, but in the meantime we'll have to settle with Onyx's E Ink only phone...

When Amazon announced their new Kindle Paperwhite, they wouldn't say what kind of E Ink panel is used - just that it's got a higher resolution (XGA), better contrast, better touch capabilities and a faster refresh rate. Our friend Sriram Peruvemba, E Ink's marketing chief explains that the major advances in this new display is a better TFT and improved software.

The new TFT backplane allows them to achieve a higher resolution - 212 dpi (XGA), compared to the older generation TFT which allowed only 167 dpi (SVGA). The new software design also allows for faster refresh. Now grey-to-grey speed is 450 mSecs, compared to 600 mSecs using the older software (i.e. 25% faster).

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.

Here's a nice video showing a game of Angry Birds on a rooted Nook Touch e-reader. Unfortunately, the device is too slow for this game which flashes a lot and does't handle the actual game animation at all:

The Nook Touch (Wi-Fi version) costs $139.

Hanvon unveiled new touch technology called ERT (Electromagnetic Resonance Touch). ERT can sense both pen input and finger touch - and is placed beneath the display panel and not above it like normal touch layers. It works by adding several capacitors to a normal digitizer touch sensor.

Hanvon plans to commercialize this technology in its e-readers (for the Chinese market) by 2H 2011.

Canada's Human Media Lab is showing a new flexible E Ink display prototype called Snaplet. This device is a wrist-mounted bracelet that has a touch display and shape sensing: when you open it up it automatically opens a notepad applications, and when you take it and curve it next to your ear it answers a phone call... pretty neat:

It's still pretty bulky of course, but this might be an interesting form factor for a phone. And it somewhat reminds us of the OLED bracelet that Universal Display and LG are developing for the US army:

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.

There are reports that Amazon plans to introduce the next-generation Kindle in August. The new device will be slimmer, and have a better display - more responsive and with a sharper picture. It won't have a color display, nor a touch one.

Bookeen are a France-based e-reader maker, that currently offer two models that use E Ink displays (the Cybook Gen3, available now for 350$, and the Opus, available now for 215$). They are set to release a new one, the Orizon, which uses Sipix e-paper instead. We have posted an interview with their CEO over at E-Reader-Info, discussing this, and other e-reader issues. If you don't want to read the whole interview, here's the 3 reasons why they moved to Sipix:

1. AUO (Sipix) touchscreen is light year away from Sony resistive technology. You keep the optical quality of ePaper and you get an incredibly reactive touchscreen. For us touchscreen on such a large display is a must-have.
2. AUO has great developments and move incredibly fast.
3. They did not want to depend only on one screen manufacturer (PVI).

PVI's chairman says that they plan to release color and flexible E Ink displays. They are also working on touch-enabled E Inks, and ones that support video. They predict that the market share of touch-capable e-readers will increase sharply in 2010. PVI wants to place the touch sensors behind the display, so image quality will be better.

PVI also reveals that E Ink's response time has increased, to the point where animation can be played.