Color eReaders – Liquavista and Freescale Collaborating on New eReaders no comments
Liquavista and Freescale Semiconductor announced today that the two companies are collaborating to bring ereaders to market by the middle of 2011 that feature Liquavista’s electrowetting displays and the Freescale i.MX515 processor. From the press release:
Freescale’s high-performance i.MX51 system-on-chip provides the necessary file decoding capabilities to match the enhanced graphics and video functionality of Liquavista’s displays. By combining both technologies, eReader manufacturers can produce a wide range of highly compelling consumer products that enable increased usability and enhanced content.
Liquavista’s displays create bright and colourful images that deliver excellent indoor and outdoor viewability and use dramatically less battery power. Offering significant advantages over existing eReader technologies, Liquavista’s high performance displays support color and high-speed video providing a true multimedia experience not currently available with today’s eReaders.
Freescale’s highly integrated i.MX515 processor has multiple processing units including an ARM Cortex™-A8 core, a vector floating point unit and an image processing unit. The i.MX515 provides up to 1680 Dhrystone MIPS and can scale in performance up to 800MHz. Advanced power management features allow for extended battery life and eliminate the need for fans or heat sinks.
Available for two of Liquavista’s launched product platforms, LiquavistaBright and LiquavistaColor, each SDK includes a 6” electrowetting display, driving circuitry, a mobile application processor host platform and a Linux based operating system.
Qualcomm has said that there will be ereaders using its Mirasol based displays on the market by the fall of 2010. Unless Mirasol hits some kind of production snags it still looks like this will be the first color ereader display technology to hit the US market. If I had to place a bet as to which color display the first color Kindle ereader will use my money would be on Mirasol.
Meanwhile Fujitsu announced (via Akihabara News) a few days ago that it has developed new color epaper with a 7:1 contrast ratio and much faster page rewrites than the epaper used in its FLEPia ereader. Fujitsu says that they plan to commercialize the new technology this fall for the Japanese market. The FLEPia ereader was priced at around a thousand dollars and was only sold in Japan.
£149.00
£109
