Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 30, 2011
How E Ink’s Triton Color Displays Work, In E-Readers and Beyond
E Ink’s new Triton line give the company’s displays a long-desired new feature: color. Most of the E Ink team is in Japan this week, demonstrating their new screens in Hanvon’s new e-reader. I spoke by phone with E Ink’s Lawrence Schwartz, who broke down the technology behind the new screens, Triton’s importance for his company, and where their displays fit into the broader ecosystem of readable screens.
“All of our screens have been building towards this,” Schwartz said. “The contrast and brightness we were able to add to the Pearl’s black-and-white screens, paired with a color filter — that’s what lets us bring color to the display.”
Schwartz emphasized that the company’s primary focus is still developing low-power, high-contrast surfaces for reading. “What’s unique about color in reading,” he added, “is that while most textual content is still in monochrome, we can introduce color into cover art, children’s books, newspapers, and textbooks — places still in the reading field where color is at a premium.”
E Ink developed the Triton screen in conjunction with a group of partners, including Epson, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and the semiconductor companies Maxim and Freescale, all of whom worked on the electronic components of the Pearl screen. In particular, Epson played a key role, providing the color filters’ controller chip.
Underneath, it’s still the same white, black and grayscale electrophoretic pigments; it’s only when filtered through the RGB overlay that the image appears in color. To reach for an historical analogy, it’s not totally dissimilar from film’s Technicolor process, which shot in black-and-white film strips through color filters, then reverse-processed.
Because the underlying technology is identical, Triton’s contrast, energy usage, viewing angle are all essentially the same as the Pearl. The image update or refresh rate for monochrome is the same (240 ms), but color animation can take up to about one full second.
Unlike a LCD display, though, pictures on the Triton don’t need to update the entire screen: a moving figure in the foreground might be refreshed while the background remains identical — just like traditional cel animation.
E-readers are the high-profile example of E Ink in action, but the company’s screens are also used in watches, battery indicators, printers, calculators, signage, end-cap displays in stores and a wide range of industrial displays. All of these displays, Schwartz said, could benefit from the introduction of color. And in the vast majority of these use cases, LCD or other full-video displays simply aren’t feasible, either for reasons of power conservation or the inherently limited nature of what’s being shown.
While Hanvon is the first company bringing the Triton screen to market, Schwartz said E Ink had other customers working with Triton screen technology who haven’t yet made announcements about their forthcoming products. Otherwise, he couldn’t comment on future devices or availability.
The most exciting innovations, Schwartz said, were the experimentations with user interface in conjunction with E Ink screens, whether using multitouch, stylus, or other NUI. E Ink, he said, works to optimize each of its displays for every one of these interfaces, which has required the company to be increasingly flexible in how it thinks about its products.
In the meantime, E Ink’s goal is to continue to improve their existing product line: get higher contrast, brighter colors, faster screen refreshes, and continue to find better ways to optimize their screens for every interface, use case and use environment.
E Ink Triton Imaging Film [E Ink]
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on November 9, 2010
BERG/Dentsu’s Incidental Media Sees Screens’ and Paper’s Playful Future
Cheap print, networked screens and location-aware hardware could create a world where dynamic text is everywhere — as ubiquitous and natural as our current media ecosystem of street signs, alarm clocks, news tickers and train tickets.
Design futurists BERG and ad agency Dentsu London, the team behind iPad Light Painting, have released two new videos for their “Making Future Magic” campaign. This two-part series on media surfaces includes “Incidental Media” and “The Journey.”
“In contrast to a Minority Report future of aggressive messages competing for a conspicuously finite attention,” writes Berg’s Jack Schulze, “these sketches show a landscape of ignorable surfaces capitalising on their context, timing and your history to quietly play and present in the corners of our lives.”
“All surfaces have access to connectivity,” Schulze adds. “All surfaces are displays responsive to people, context, and timing. If any surface could show anything, would the loudest or the most polite win? Surfaces which show the smartest, most relevant material in any given context will be the most warmly received.”
I’m particularly taken with the use of paper ephemera in both concept videos. The shift to networked digital communication is usually identified with a shift away from paper and to the screen, when it’s actually anything but. If the identity-specific, instant-update expectations of what Schulze calls “app culture” were translated to print ephemera like coffee-shop receipts and train tickets — and I think that translation is inevitable — we start to see a new phase of print: really, a new kind of publishing.
I could spend paragraphs annotating each of the ideas and all of the tech here — none of it new, just reconfigured — but you’d be better off reading the BERG blog posts above instead.
As an American who regularly travels the postwar-era east coast regional rail system, for whom a Virgin Rail trip from London to Birmingham is already a kind of unimaginable, delightful future, this video leaves me with wonder. And not just wonder: patient reassurance that the future is already on the way.
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Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on November 3, 2010
Screen Research Breakthroughs Promise Low Power, Fast Response
Research labs all over the world are working to improve the next generation of displays for computers, televisions, e-readers and commercial interfaces. Improvements to fundamental screen technologies by separate teams at Vanderbilt and Cincinatti point towards the low-power, quick-response screens of the future.
For the Cincinatti team, the key challenge for power consumption in screens is generating light. They sidestepped the problem of traditional designs by using a highly reflective surface in the screen’s subtrata that reflects ambient light rather than generating its own.
“What we’ve developed breaks down a significant barrier to bright electronic displays that don’t require a heavy battery to power them,” lead researcher Jason Heikenfeld said. He believes their new display can generate brighter, high-color-saturated devices equal to that of a conventional LCD screen with an energy cost comparable to the E Ink displays on devices like Amazon’s Kindle.
“Conventional wisdom says you can’t have it all with electronic devices: speed, brightness and low-cost manufacturing,” Heikenfeld said. “That’s going to change with the introduction of this new discovery into the market.”
Qualcomm’s new Mirasol screen technology also offers full-color and video at low power, but Heikenfeld claims his team’s new display technology is at least three times brighter than Qualcomm’s.
The Vanderbilt team’s claims are relatively more modest, but perhaps more easily incorporated into existing screen technology. The chemical lab led by Piotr Kaszynski thinks one path to a low-energy, quick-response display future is to change the chemical composition of our LCD screens.
Zwitterionic liquid crystals; credit Kaszynski lab
“We have created liquid crystals with an unprecedented electric dipole, more than twice that of existing liquid crystals,” says Kaszynski. This means the dipoles will require a lower threshold voltage (using less power) and switch between light and dark states much faster, allowing for a quicker refresh rate.
The new liquid crystals have a “zwitterionic” structure; their inorganic portions are negatively charged and organic portions are positively charged, but they carry a net electrical charge of zero. Zwitterions have long been thought to key to producing more efficient liquid crystals, but the chemical procedure to produce them in the proper structure was only discovered in 2002.
Top image by Jason Heikenfeld and Angela Klocke, University of Cincinnati
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on October 6, 2010
Entourage to Launch Pocket Sized E-Reader/Netbook Hybrid
Remember the Entourage eDGe, a device that combined an e-reader and a LCD screen into a netbook like form factor? Nearly seven months after that hybrid device made its debut, Entourage is gearing up to launch a pocket sized version that will have a smaller display and be lighter.
The original dual-screen eDGe has a 9.7-inch E Ink screen on the left half and a 10-inch touchscreen LCD on the right. That means you could use it as an e-reader, a notepad or as a netbook–and all at the same time.
The Pocket Edge will have a six-inch black-and-white E Ink screen and a seven-inch color LCD touchscreen. It will still run the Android operating system, says The Digital Reader.
Entourage is planning a 3G edition of the Pocket Edge for Verizon and a separate Wi-Fi-only model.
The original Entourage eDGe made its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. Then, e-readers and netbooks were two of the hottest consumer electronics products. Entourage tried to combine the two and birth the eDGe. But the Frankensteinish device suffered from some major problems.
For starters, the eDGe was just too big and heavy. The 10-inch screen size meant that it couldn’t easily be whipped out and used to read e-books on the train or browse web pages on the road. The device’s weight, about twice that of the iPad, put a strain on the arms if it was held up for more than 15 minutes.
The eDGe ended up as a device too big to be an e-reader and, without a keyboard, too uncomfortable to be just a netbook.
The Pocket Edge hopes to correct some of those problems. In terms of tech specs, it will have features similar to the bigger version. It will come with a USB port, a micro SD card slot, a camera and a non-removable battery.
Along with the smaller screen, the changes mean that the Pocket Edge will be lighter, about one pound, compared to the three pounds of the original.
What’s disappointing to hear though is that the Pocket Edge will use the older Vizplex version of the E Ink screen and not the new Pearl E Ink display that’s in the latest Kindle and Sony e-readers. The Pearl has a much better contrast and for e-reader enthusiasts the older technology in the Pocket Edge is likely to be a disappointment.
It’s also indicative of why the eDGe didn’t become a hit the first time around. If the device is mediocre e-reader and a passable netbook, consumers have little incentive to buy a half-baked device that’s doesn’t offer the best of either worlds. Instead, they are better off getting a Kindle or a Nook that does one thing very well and using a netbook or a tablet for their other computing needs.
Entourage hasn’t said how much the Pocket Edge will cost but the device is expected to ship in late October. So far, the word is it will be cheaper than the $500 original model.
Check out more photos of the new Pocket Edge:
The Pocket Edge Combines an E Ink and LCD Screen.
The Pocket Edge has a USB port and a micro SD card slot.
Photos: Nate Hoffelder/The Digital Reader
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 23, 2010
New Amazon Ad Shows Kindle As Sexy Competitor
Amazon’s new commercial puts the Kindle in the best possible light: poolside, in the hands of a beautiful, bikini-clad woman. It even works in a dig at the iPad and other LCD tablets; the dweeby guy next to the Kindle reader can only see his own ugly reflection.
This video has been percolating around the tech blogosphere for a couple of days, but I don’t think anyone has gotten it quite right. (I was off yesterday. Sorry.) I honestly don’t think it’s about competing with the iPad, or touting the benefits of non-reflective screens, as much as it’s about re-positioning the Kindle in the popular imagination.
Think back three years to when the Kindle was first announced. Yes, there was a splashy cover story about the future of reading. But everyone agreed: the device itself was ugly, it was expensive, and its market was limited to rich bookwormy dorks who needed something to read on airplanes where the physical world could vanish behind the virtual mindspace of a not-quite-real book.
Now, the Kindle is stylish; it’s relatively inexpensive; and the world in which you read it doesn’t look like a place you’d want to escape from at all. That is, apart from your nosy neighbors and their self-involved not-quite-pickup lines.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 15, 2010
Sony Pocket E-Reader Combines Touchscreen and E-Ink
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Sony 350 with Cover from Sony Style
Remember Sony? The company that owned innovative high-end electronics for a few decades? Well, they make e-book readers. While we don’t write about them as often as the Kindle or iPad, some of Sony’s readers are really good. Their newest and prettiest model will be available stateside this week; it’s definitely worth a closer look.
The most attention-grabbing feature of the new Sony is the fact that its e-Ink screen responds to touch input. The touch sensors aren’t actually in the screen, but are triggered by infrared sensors all around the screen’s edges. Invisible beams respond when your finger breaks the plane of the screen — just like security devices in a spy movie. You don’t even have to actually physically touch the screen for the sensors to respond, just get within the sensor’s threshold.
The Sony PRS-350 has the same Pearl high-contrast e-Ink screen as the Kindle, but in a slightly smaller form factor (5″ instead of 6″). According to iReader Review (and as you can see from the gallery above), this knocks the image and text quality of the old Sony Readers out of the park. And because the new Pocket Reader doesn’t have a hardware keyboard, the whole device is only 5 3/4″ x 4 1/8,” and just a shade over 1/3″ thick.
Like all Sony Readers, it supports both ePub and PDF with or without DRM. The body design is gorgeous, and the build quality is reportedly top-notch.
So we have a tiny, touchscreen e-Ink reading machine that might even display images and tiny fonts better than the new Kindle. Did Sony just make the long-awaited “paperback e-reader” to move the whole show?
No; unfortunately, they didn’t. Here’s why.
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The Sony Pocket reader has no internet capability at all. No Wi-Fi, no 3G. Nothing.
This means that while it’s terrific for reading books, you can’t use it to read anything else. No checking email, no using Instapaper, no Google Reader.
Speaking of Instapaper and RSS readers — there’s also the specter of the Amazon App Store, which promises to add a lot more functionality to the Kindle. Functionality that’s likely to be dependent in no small part on web access. Even if Sony starts thinking seriously about casual gaming on their e-Readers — and frankly, I think moving in the other direction and putting e-Books on PSPs is a lot more likely — they’re still moving uphill.
In a follow-up review, iReader Review notes that actually loading books onto the Pocket Reader is a giant pain. “Its not just that you cant get books to Sony 350 wirelessly in 60 seconds. You cant get books to it in 60 seconds period… Sony proves that its a hardware company and not a software company.” He notes lots of other user-experience problems with the device, too, including an imagined vignette where Sony asks its software design team to take this magical device and completely screw up the UI.
Finally, it costs $179; $10 less than the 3G Kindle (which gets you free 3G forever), and $40 more than the Wi-Fi only Kindle ($30 more than the Wi-Fi Nook), both of which still get you wi-fi. A 20-25% markup is a lot to pay for a touchscreen.
Face it — two months ago, the Sony Pocket Reader would have been a cannonball in the world of e-readers. It would have been cheaper and more capable than nearly anything on the market. But the Kindle 3, with its improved screen and WebKit browser, is actually turning into something more than a repository for e-books.
Sony’s made a gorgeous one, and I think it will appeal to many, many people. Seriously — it’s appealing to me. But it doesn’t look like the future.
According to Sony Style USA, the silver Pocket Reader is available for order now and will ship tomorrow (the 14th); the pink version can be preordered and should ship Thursday (the 16th).
P.S.: Whatever you do, don’t try to find this e-reader by searching for “Sony 350.” Sony makes a kajillion products from cameras to DVD players that all have “350″ somewhere in their official handle. It’s a nightmare. Why they don’t just call the thing “Pocket Reader” is completely beyond me.
All images courtesy of iReader Review.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on September 13, 2010
Now Sharper Image Launches an E-Reader
Just as the e-readers market seemed poised for a shakeout, Sharper Image–a store best known for its R2-D2 droids and ionic air purifier–has decided to jump in with a new e-reader.
Sharper Image has announced ‘Literati,’ a device with a color screen that will retail for $160. The device will be powered by the Kobo e-book store. Literati will have Wi-Fi connectivity, wireless book downloads and free reading apps.
The Literati has been created after an “extensive two-year design and development process,” says Sharper Image, and will ship nationwide in early October.
The Literati comes to market at a time when upstart e-readers are disappearing. Price wars by the big three e-reader makers–Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble and competition in the category has taken its toll on companies. Earlier this month, Foxit announced it will stop development on its eSlick e-reader. Plastic Logic canceled its plans to bring its e-reader to market, while Cool-er’s e-readers have been listed out of stock in the U.S. for months.
Meanwhile, bigger e-reader makers are ramping up their marketing efforts. Barnes & Noble has started aggressively selling the Nook reader in its stores. Amazon new, improved Kindle e-reader also seems to have turned into best-seller with Amazon racing to keep up with the demand.
Literati will wade into this fiercely competitive market. The color screen on the device is interesting. Though the company hasn’t offered any details about it, it is likely to be an LCD display. But the device doesn’t have a big price advantage over its rivals. The Literati costs just $20 less than the $190 Kindle.
What it has going for it is an impressive retail distribution network. The Literati will be available in stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, JC Penney, Kohls and Macys.
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on August 25, 2010
Amazon Kindle 3 May Be On Its Way
Amazon’s Kindle 2 e-reader is listed as “temporarily out of stock” on the company’s website in what could be a sign that a new Kindle model may be on its way.
“Order now and we’ll deliver (the Kindle) when available. We’ll e-mail you with an estimated delivery date as soon as we have more information,” says Amazon on its page listing the Kindle 2.
The shortage may be because of a surge in demand for Kindle but more likely is that Amazon is preparing to introduce an improved version of the device. So far, Amazon hasn’t commented on the reasons for the Kindle shortage.
In June, Amazon cut price on the Kindle to $190 from $260 earlier. A few days later it launched the new Kindle DX, featuring an updated version of the E Ink screen known as Pearl. The black-and-white Pearl display offers a contrast ratio 50 per cent better than the earlier model of the DX screen.
One of the hottest consumer electronics products of last year, the e-reader market is in turmoil this year. Smaller e-reader makers such as Audiovox, iRex, Plastic Logic and Cool-er have found themselves squeezed out by the competition, especially Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Despite the launch of Apple iPad, which comes with its own iBooks bookstore, Amazon has continued to see strong demand for the Kindle. Since it lowered the price of the Kindle to $190, sales of the Kindle have tripled, says Amazon. Amazon hasn’t disclosed till date how many Kindles it has sold.
The latest shortage of the device coincides with rumors that Amazon planned to introduce a new Kindle model in August. An e-reader with a color screen is not likely but the new Kindle could sport a better black-and-white display, updated hardware, improved user interface and new apps.
Photo: (kairin/Flickr)
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 28, 2010
DIY: How to Install a Pixel Qi Display in Your Netbook
If you are willing to take a screwdriver to your computer, Pixel Qi’s low-power displays that can switch between color LCD and black-and-white screens could be in your netbook.
The 10.1-inch displays available through makershed.com look like standard LCD screens inside the room. But take them outside and they turn into low-power e-paper like display.
Pixel Qi first showed the screens in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The display called 3Qi operates in three modes: a full-color LCD transmissive mode; a low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a transflective mode that makes the LCD display visible in sunlight.
Pixel Qi has started selling the displays directly to consumers though the company is also working with with PC manufacturers.
For now, Pixel Qi says it can guarantee the compatibility of the displays, which cost $275 each, with only two models of netbooks–the Samsung N130 and Lenovo S10. But the screen works in most other models, says the company.
Swapping out existing netbooks screens for those from Pixel Qi is a simple DIY tweak, says Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen.
“Changing the screen of your netbook is easy, the process takes about 5-10 minutes using a small screwdriver. Its simple,” she wrote on her blog.
Users have to remove the front plastic bezel of the existing display in their netbook, unlatch the screen, plug Pixel Qi’s display in its place and snap on the screws.
But if you like to see what the process really is like, check out this video from Make magazine. The 10-minute long video shows how to remove the display off an Acer Aspire One netbook.
Seems like this will be a breeze to do at home and the results should be worth it. Pixel Qi screens consume 80 percent less power in the reflective e-paper-like mode, says Jepsen.
Photo: Pixel Qi screen/Priya Ganapati
[via Ubergizmo via Liliputing]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 9, 2010
Pixel Qi Hybrid E-Ink LCD Screens for Your Own Netbook
Got a netbook? Specifically, got a Samsung N130 or a Lenovo S10-2? Even more specifically, do you use it in and outdoors, but find it hard to read in the sun? We have good news! The Maker Shed will sell you one of Pixel Qi’s dual-mode displays as a straight swap-in for your existing LCD-panel.
The 10.1-inch screen runs in one of two modes. When indoors, or watching video, you use the regular LCD display, which will look pretty much the same as the one you already have. When you’re in to mood for some reading, or you are outside in bright sunlight, or you’re just running low on battery power, you can switch to the e-ink mode.
This disables the backlight and shows you hi-res, grayscale pixels, much like you’d see on the screen of the Amazon Kindle. Because it only uses power when updating the screen, it sips power.
There is also a hybrid mode, which lets the sun reflect off the back of the display assembly and back out through the color LCD. This both saves battery power and lets you view a normal color display outdoors.
The panel will cost you $275, which puts it out of the “merely curious” bracket but is still cheap enough for people who do a lot of outdoor computing. The Maker Shed store page also says that the panel will likely work in any netbook: the Lenovo and the Samsung are just the only ones so far tested and guaranteed.
And according to the Pixel Qi blog, which first described the plan to sell these panels separately from the company’s own notebooks, the swap-operation (swaperation?) is easy:
Its only slightly more difficult than changing a lightbulb: its basically 6 screws, pulling off a bezel, unconnecting [sic] the old screen and plugging this one in. Thats it. Its a 5 minute operation.
Available now.
Pixel Qi display [Maker Shed]
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on July 1, 2010
Plastic Logic Que E-Reader Turns Into Vaporware
Remember Que, Plastic Logic’s large screen e-reader that debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year? It’s increasingly looking like vaporware.
Plastic Logic isn’t shipping the Que e-reader, though the company is officially calling it a “delay.” Plastic Logic has canceled all pre-oders and is no longer offering a date as to when we can see the Que in the real world. It has also stopped taking pre-orders for the device.
“We need to let you know that since your unit will not ship on June 24 as planned, our automated ordering system has automatically canceled your order,” Plastic Logic sent in an e-mail to its customers.
Billed as an e-reader for business users, the Que had an 8.5 x 11-inch touchscreen display and the ability to handle Microsoft Word files, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, digital books, PDFs, magazines and newspapers. The device could also synchronize with Microsoft Outlook to display e-mails and calendar.
A 4-GB version of the Que with Wi-Fi and storage for about 35,000 documents was priced at $650. The company also announced a $800 8-GB version that includes Wi-Fi and 3G capability from AT&T.
It was an ambitious move and one out-of-sync with the trend in the e-reader market. Amazon’s large screen Kindle DX is priced at$490. Meanwhile, Apple has launched its iPad tablet with iBooks, an iTunes-like book store. Starting at $500, the iPad offers readers access to e-mail and books with a large color touchscreen. So far, Apple has sold 3 million iPads. About 7 million e-readers are expected to sell this year, estimates Forrester Research.
Not surprisingly, Plastic Logic has failed to get off the ground. A month before it promised to to ship the Que reader in April, the company announced to customers that it is delaying the launch to “sometime this summer.” In an e-mail then, Plastic Logic said it needed the time to “fine-tune features and enhance the overall product.”
This time around, it is offering the same reason.
“Plastic Logic wants to make sure that the product they deliver is the right one for their target business customers in the rapidly changing marketplace,” a spokesperson for Plastic Logic wrote in an e-mail to us. “They are continuing to refine the product, technology and features, and are anxious to get in the marketplace as soon as possible.”
Unless Plastic Logic can bring the price of the Que down significantly and offer greater value than the iPad or the Kindle DX, it is likely to be a product that will be dead on arrival–if it ever makes it to market.
Photo: Que/Priya Ganapati
Source:wired.com
Posted under Gadget Reviews
This post was written by Journalist on June 25, 2010
