E Ink and Canatu announced a new partnership, to develop a line of flexible touch displays for the wearable markets. The first product will be ready next month (July 2016) - a bendable ultra-thin (0.162 mm) 6.3" touch-enabled E Ink display.
The new display will have a resolution of 200x1040 (169 PPI) with 16 gray levels. It's short and long and suitable for applications such as bracelets and other wrist worn devices. The two companies will hopefully offer other display sizes in the future too.
China-based e-paper developer Guangzou OED Technologies announced that it developed a new graphene e-paper technology. The company aims to start producing these new screens within a year.
Graphene is the world's strongest and most conductive (to both electricity and heat) material, and it is set to revolutionize many industries - including the display industry. The company says that the new graphene-based paper is brighter and more flexible. The graphene paper is also said to have "more intensity", but I'm not sure what this means.
Microsoft presented a new prototype tablet keyboard cover that they call DisplayCover, and it includes a 1280x305 E Ink touch screen. This can be used to access applications via shortcuts, and can also accept stylus input and touch gestures.
Microsoft says they opted for an E Ink because it's very power efficient. This is just a prototype, but hopefully Microsoft will commercialize a similar tablet cover one day.
Back in October 2012 we posted about an Onyx E Ink phone prototype, and now we hear reports that the company plans to launch this phone soon. The so-called E43 Android phone sports a 4.3" E Ink panel and a 1 Ghz CPU.
The company is also working on two new E Ink e-readers. Both will have Wi-Fi, a touch display, 4GB of RAM and a 1 GHz CPU. They will actually be Android (v2.3) tablets, limited by the E Ink display. The BOOX R65 will have an IR touchscreen while the BOOX C65 will have a capacitive touchscreen.
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.
