Archive for the ‘Color eReaders’ tag
A tale of three tablets – Kindle Fire vs Nook Tablet vs Kobo Vox 1 comment
The three largest ebooksellers — Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble — all have new reading tablets out for the holidays. The Kindle Fire in particular has reportedly been selling very well — according to Amazon the Fire quickly became its bestselling product right after launch.
Rather than being full fledged tablets like the iPad or a Honeycomb-based device that might be considered a netbook or even laptop replacement, the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet are primarily platforms for consuming content purchased from their respective makers. But Amazon at least seems more than willing to take on the iPad head-to-head, as can be seen at the Kindle vs. iPad page at Amazon, which directly compares the features of the Kindle Fire and the iPad 2.
In some respects the Kobo Vox is the most tablet-like of the three, as it lets users install ereading apps from all three ebookstores and can gain access to multiple app stores. But the Vox suffers from sometimes laggy performance and a buggy web browser. Unless and until Kobo can fix the performance issues of the Vox with software updates it just isn’t in the same class as the other two tablets. Mostly I will be comparing the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire here, although I will be throwing in the occasional comparison to the Vox as well. The Vox was the first of the three to ship and I have already reviewed it.
Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire appear to be solidly constructed, while the Vox has a rather plasticky feel and suffers from a bezel that seems too wide. The Nook Tablet has the same designer looks as its predecessor, the Nook Color. The Kindle Fire is more plain-looking, but I don’t think it looks bad; perhaps functional with no nonsense is an apt description. At any rate I find the Fire to be more comfortable to hold and use one-handed. The Nook Tablet, while it is about a half ounce lighter, is larger than the Fire and feels like it really needs to be held in both hands. The Fire fits much more comfortably in my (rather large) hand.
The displays on both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire seem equally good to me (with one exception, which I’ll get to), with the Vox again lagging behind. All three devices have great angles of view. All three are equally useless in the sunshine, although they can all be read outdoors in the shade easily enough. The photo above (from left: Kobo Vox, Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet) was taken outdoors in the shade of my patio on a sunny winter’s day.
Presumably if you are looking at purchasing one of these reading tablets rather than a full-blown tablet, reading ebooks is one of the primary uses to which you plan on putting it. All three provide a good ebook reading experience, although the Kobo reading app has less features (except for its social reading features, which are probably the strongest). I still prefer reading on an e-ink display rather than on a backlit LCD, but sometimes one wants the color. A backlit screen is also good for situations like reading in bed when a lamp would disturb someone else.
The Fire reading app gives you more type faces to choose from, while the Nook Tablet gives you more background colors. On the Fire I usually read with the sepia background in the daytime. It’s not that I’m a particular fan of sepia, but Amazon only gives you three background color choices. Amazon pairs the sepia background with a brownish black font that is slightly less contrasty than the darker black font B&N uses with its sepia background. I do wish Amazon would offer more background/font color choices. This is increasingly important depending on how light sensitive your eyes are. B&N’s first Nook for iPad app let users set their own background and font colors; I wish we could have that ability again — I was able to come up with some color combinations that were very comfortable on my eyes.
Both the Nook and the Fire let you access device settings and brightness controls from within your ebook. This is convenient as you don’t have to close your book to tweak the brightness level or turn off the Wi-Fi.
The annotations menu of the Nook is more attractive and includes a Share button for sharing quotes on Twitter or Facebook. 
With the Nook Tablet, B&N finally lets its customers read books in landscape mode if they so choose. This feature will also be coming to the Nook Color with an impending update. Other features such as searching and backtracking seem to be adequately supported in both devices. Pagination is better on the Nook as in addition to telling you what page you are on and how many pages the book has it also tells you how many pages are left in the current chapter. All of the Kindle books I’ve opened on the Fire still use the old location system and percentage read instead of showing real page numbers, even when real page numbers are available when the same book is read on an e-ink Kindle.
Shopping for books works well from both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, with each eagerly recommending new titles you might be interested in as well as providing easy to find links to bestseller lists, etc. I find especially the Kindle Store display is nicely done on the Fire, but one complaint I have about it is that you cannot add a Kindle book to your wishlist from the Fire.
You can add to your wishlist at B&N from the Nook Tablet and from the e-ink Kindle ereaders you can add to your Amazon wishlist; so I’m not sure why Amazon left the ability out on the Fire. Perhaps Amazon is hoping that we’ll just hit the Buy It Now button since we can’t use the Wishlist? Using the Add to Wishlist button is good discipline for those of us who already have way more ebooks in our virtual stacks than we can possibly read.
Another ability the Fire is in need of is the ability to make new categories or bookshelves to better organize your library. At the moment all you can do is place titles from the Carousel onto the Favorites shelf on the home screen. The Nook Tablet does let you create additional bookshelves and so has a big leg-up when it comes to keeping your library neatly organized.
Another area in which I think the Nook is superior is the virtual keyboard. The keys on the virtual keyboard of the Kindle Fire are too close together when in portrait mode, causing me and my big fingers to make frequent typos. The keys on the Nook Tablet are spaced further apart and I have no problems typing on its keyboard. In landscape mode the Fire’s keyboard is larger and is easy to use.
The Kindle Newsstand now includes a number of digital magazines that are optimized for the Kindle Fire and faithfully reproduce the print editions. The overall presentation is similar to that of Barnes & Noble. Tapping the screen brings up a sliding strip of page thumbnails for rapidly scanning through the magazine. There is a text view mode that make articles easier to read. On both the Nook and Fire you can adjust font size, background, type face, etc. when in text view mode.
While the presentation is similar on both devices, the Nook Tablet seems a bit more polished. Pan and zoom and sliding the thumbnail strip seem to generally work a little bit more smoothly on the Nook, although I did have the magazine app become unstable once, forcing me to reboot. The Nook also adds a couple of embellishments like a 3D effect to the thumbnails and page curls when turning magazine pages.
As for stability issues, I’ve found both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire to be quite good. On the Nook Tablet I did have to reboot on the one occasion mentioned above. I had to reboot the Fire once when I started a game app and the buttons on the in-game menu were unresponsive.
One of the new features of the Kindle Fire that received a lot of attention pre-launch is Amazon’s Silk web browser, which uses Amazon’s cloud servers to speed up the browsing experience. I found the web browsing experience on both the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet to be generally good and both browsers to be quite quick. I’ve done a number of comparison sets and in one series the Nook will be faster more often while at a different time the Fire will win the series by connecting quicker more often. The relative performance of the two tablet’s browsers seems to just depend on the vagaries of the Internet at any given time. Overall the Kindle Fire does seem to be slightly faster more of the time, but the difference is not usually dramatic.
The Nook Tablet has 16GB onboard memory, of which only 1GB can be used for content not purchased at B&N. There is also a microSD card slot. The Kindle Fire has 8GB of built-in memory and beyond that depends on storage in Amazon’s cloud. Personal documents and other content can be stored in the user’s Kindle archive and downloaded to the Fire, Kindle ereader or other devices equipped with a Kindle app as needed. Music can be stored in the cloud and streamed via the Amazon Cloud Drive. Storage is free for music purchased at Amazon.
When listening to music with earphones both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire have much better sound quality than the Vox. Between the Fire and the Nook, the Kindle has the stronger bass, while the Nook Tablet to my ears has somewhat clearer mid-range and highs, but slightly muddy bass. The Nook Tablet’s sound quality was also marred by a faint but ever-present and annoying background hiss. The Fire has an equalizer in the music player’s settings that can be played with to tweak the sound a bit. Overall, I think the Kindle Fire has the best sound.
Both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire come with Netflix and Hulu Plus apps. Netflix worked fine for me on both devices, but the picture quality seems slightly better on the Nook Tablet — colors are just a little brighter and the picture is a little sharper. The Netflix app is the only place I’ve noticed any real difference in display quality between the two, and I expect that this could be fixed at some point by an update to the Netflix app for the Fire.
The Kindle Fire also has access to Amazon’s streaming video services, and for Amazon Prime members there are over 10,000 movies and TV programs that can be streamed for free. While I was not able to get a Netflix app to work properly on the Vox, it does support more video formats than the Nook or Fire. Users of the latter two devices will likely be spending time with Handbrake or a similar program in order to sideload their own videos.
Apps have the capability to make a device useful for more than just reading and watching video, and when it comes to available apps, the Amazon Appstore has more titles to choose from than B&N’s Nook app store. The Vox enjoys the greatest access to apps as it can gain access to the Amazon Appstore and other app sellers in addition to the Getjar store app it comes with.
I’ve only tried a couple of games but, as expected, performance on the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet was a little smoother than on the Vox. The better displays of the Fire and Nook also make for a better gaming experience.
The first video below is an overview of the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.
The second video below compares the digital magazine reading experience on both tablets, as well as graphic novels, video on Netflix and YouTube, and a bit of game playing on the Kindle Fire.
So which is the best reader tablet?
To my mind the real choice here is between the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet, as the Kobo Vox has issues. Kobo will possibly be able to improve the performance of the Vox and, if so, it may yet prove to be a contender. The Vox’s strong point is that it is not tied to just one content provider. Its weak points are lower performance and a less vibrant display.
I wish I could say that it is a clear-cut choice as to whether the Kindle Fire or the Nook Tablet is better, but I can’t. Both are quite nice for what they do, and both have their own strong points. B&N has been doing the reading tablet thing longer and in some ways the Nook Tablet is a bit more polished, but I would expect Amazon to catch up quickly via software updates. The Nook Tablet has some stronger specs, but the Kindle Fire is backed up by a stronger ecosystem.
To some users, the Nook Tablet’s on-device memory will be more appealing than Amazon’s cloud features. The Nook Tablet will also probably be a better choice for rooting. The Nook Tablet’s better battery life (up to 11.5 hours vs 8 hours) is also appealing. In the end though, I think the choice for most people will depend on which company they prefer doing business with. I like both devices and think that either one will be a good choice if you don’t need the capabilities of a more powerful and more expensive tablet. The Kindle Fire, at $199 does have a price advantage over the Nook Tablet, which is $249.
Personally, I have to say that I prefer the Kindle Fire for my own use. Partly this is because it feels more ergonomic than the Nook Tablet to me, but also because I just like the Kindle platform and the Kindle Store better. Most of my ebooks are Kindle books, and while I still prefer reading them on an e-ink display, the Fire is great when you need color and/or video.
It should be noted that the Kindle Fire does not have all of the abilities that the e-ink based Kindle ereaders have when it comes to organizing and handling text-based content, but that will hopefully change. Since the Fire has been selling so well I would expect and hope for Amazon to bring its capabilities up to the level of the rest of the Kindle family.
I sold my Nook Color to clear some room on my desk (and in my wallet) for the Nook Tablet. If you are wondering if you need to upgrade from the Nook Color, I would say it is probably not necessary for most users. Especially in view of the fact that the NC will be getting what sounds like a major software update in the very near future. The Nook Tablet does have a faster processor, more onboard memory and improved battery life, and will therefore probably make for a more attractive device to root than the NC. The Nook Tablet will also be better for video as it does support more formats. The incoming software update will bring Netflix and Hulu Plus to the Nook Color.
If, on the other hand, you are trying to decide between the Nook Color and the Nook Tablet, I would spend the extra $50 for the tablet. The better specs will provide some future-proofing.
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Delta to begin production of QR-LPD color epaper this year? no comments
You may remember QR-LPD (quick response liquid powder display), the color epaper display developed by Bridgestone under the brand name AeroBee and to be used in color ereaders manufactured and marketed by Delta Electronics? There were reports a few months ago that Delta had shelved plans to release a QR-LPD based ereader but would continue its R&D efforts on the technology.
Today the Taiwan Economic News is reporting (based on reports by a Japanese news agency) that Delta and Bridgestone now plan to go ahead with production of QR-LPD epaper displays in a variety of sizes by the end of the year. According to the report, an 8.2-inch display will be used in an ereader that will be the first to feature Chinese handwriting recognition.
I remember being less than impressed with the QR-LPD prototypes that Delta had on display at CES. The page refresh rate seemed much too slow to me for use in an ereader — hopefully Delta has been able to improve this. Otherwise I would imagine that the display has more potential for success in the signage and advertising industries.
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Qualcomm takes Mirasol ereader back to the drawing board no comments
Pocket-lint is reporting that Qualcomm has canceled an ereader product using
the Mirasol display that was planned for this year. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs is quoted as saying that he wasn’t happy with the product and decided not to launch it with the current generation of Mirasol. Jacobs also said that the planned device was “a low volume ereader product,” which I’m interpreting as meaning it would have been quite expensive.
Qualcomm is continuing work on the technology and hopefully we will see devices using an improved version of this low-powered reflective color display, but that’s not likely this year.
Most of the prototypes I’ve seen were flaunting the Mirasol display’s prowess at showing color images, but at SID 2011 I got a good look at a Mirasol demo running an ebook simulation. It did seem to me that while Mirasol’s reflective color display is quite good at color graphics, it is not as good as e-ink for reading ebooks.
This bit of news probably lends more credence to the rumors that Amazon is using an LCD screen for a forthcoming tablet.
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SID 2011 no comments
The Society of Information Display International Symposium (SID) was held in Los Angeles this year and I got to spend a couple of hours exploring the exhibits. There were, as should be expected, quite a lot of tablet and ereader related display technologies on display at this year’s exhibition.
Mirasol
Qualcomm provided its Mirasol booth with a number of demonstration units at SID. This included the demo unit shown in the photos below that was connected to a multimeter to demonstrate its low power consumption.
Most of the videos you see of the Mirasol display are showing off its ability to display color images. At SID Mirasol also had a demo running a video loop of an ebook reading app that I caught on video.
As you are no doubt aware by now, the Mirasol display technology was originally inspired by the iridescence in nature of such things as butterfly wings and the feathers of peacocks. There is in fact a bit of an iridescent quality that is noticeable in the display. This slight metallic sheen is much more apparent to me when the demos I’ve come across are showing pages of text rather than color pictures.
Based on the demonstration units I’ve seen, I’m thinking that Mirasol may not be quite as good for ereading as e-ink displays are, though it will be far easier on the eyes than a backlit LCD screen. Of course it is hard to form an opinion with only limited viewing time on demo displays running video clips. We will have to wait for an actual finished product to see for sure. The reps at the Mirasol booth were quite confident that tablets and/or ereaders with Mirasol displays will be on store shelves by the end of the year, so we shouldn’t have long to wait.
E Ink Holdings
E Ink Holdings had the higher resolution epaper announced a few weeks ago on display. These were just static displays and I could not see any page turns. This is basically a Pearl display with a higher resolution backplane, which results in almost twice the resolution of the standard Pearl display. It is very good for viewing schematics and intricate line drawings. The photo below shows the two prototypes E Ink had on display.
You may recall a few weeks ago there was another rumor concerning the much speculated about Amazon Kindle Tablet? According to this particular rumor Amazon has placed orders for tablets to be manufactured by Quanta Computer. These tablets are said to make use of the FFS LCD display from Hydis, 
which is a division of E Ink Holdings.
This beauty was on display at the E Ink booth as well. The Hydis display has very vivid colors and comes in a variety of sizes. To the right are a couple of shots of a 7-inch Hydis panel. The color banding is from my camera.
This display would indeed make for a gorgeous tablet.
Samsung
Before SID began Samsung announced a new tablet display, an ultra-high resolution 10.1-inch WQXGA PenTile RGBW screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1600. This screen uses 40 percent less power than legacy RGB stripe LCD displays. Comparing this display with the Hydis above, the Hydis FFA LCD seems to have the lusher colors, while the PenTile provides an exceedingly sharp image.
Samsung also had a 10.1 inch WXGA MEMS display at SID. This is the world’s largest MEMS display. Not sure if it will be coming to a tablet anytime soon, but it was impressive.
The photo below shows the PenTile screen on the left and the MEMS on the right.
Samsung also had a few demos of the reflective electrowetting display technology that came with its acquisition of Liquavista. In addition to a demo of the color electrowetting display, Samsung also had a couple of black and white lower frequency displays that sip even less power for applications where color or video are not needed. Liquavista’s display technology has the potential to be very power efficient by combining intelligent power management with the ability to dynamically adjust the frame rate depending on the requirements of the content being shown.
When I asked the Samsung reps when we might see products shipping with their electrowetting displays they really didn’t seem to have any idea, but the consensus seemed to be sometime next year. Personally, I’ve always liked this color display. The colors are not as vibrant as some of the competition, but it looks more paper-like to me — kind of like an older comic book.
Ricoh Color ePaper
Okay, I didn’t get to see this one. Ricoh’s press release says that they
introduced the technology at SID, but I don’t think there were actually any prototypes on display — Ricoh didn’t have a booth at the exhibition.
At any rate, the display Ricoh is working on looks interesting, though it looks like it will be some time before the technology can be used in something like an ereading tablet. The company has been working on this since at least 2009, when it developed the world’s first new organic electrochromic material that is capable of producing the three primary colors cyan, magenta and yellow.
Ricoh says that it has achieved color displays in still images that are 2.5 times brighter and have four times the color reproduction range of other color epaper technologies. Some other features include lower manufacturing cost than competing forms of epaper; the capability to be used on flexible plastic substrates; it also sounds as if this will be a bistable display — does not use power except when refreshing the screen — and so will be very power efficient.
Something to hopefully see at next year’s CES. The picture is from Ricoh, and you can read more of the details of how Ricoh’s epaper works here.
Below is a short video I made that shows a few of the displays mentioned above. Please note that the rather bad color banding in the MEMS display is the fault of my video camera, which also does not do close-ups very well — the text in the Mirasol display really is much better than my video shows. Also, that is not me in the background complaining because the electrowetting display has no backlight 
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BeBook launches tablet no comments
BeBook has launched an LCD tablet powered by Android 2.2 (Froyo). 
The BeBook Live tablet sports a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen and Wi-Fi. Some of the other features:
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n); Bluetooth; USB 2.0; 1080 HDMI output
- CPU: 1GHz
- Display: 7-inch TFT LCD with 800 x 600 resolution; capacitive multitouch
- Memory: 4GB internal; microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
- Front facing 2MP camera
- Two speakers; headphone jack; microphone
- Accelerometer
- Dimensions: 140 x 202 x 11 mm (5.5 x 8 x .43 inches); Weight 426 grams (15 ounces)
The BeBook Live is currently up for pre-order at $279 and is expected to ship around the latter part of June. Presently BeBook’s new tablet is shown as not available for shipping to the US.
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Bridgestone/Delta color epaper news no comments
You may recall the QR-LPD color reflective display created by Bridgestone and to be marketed by Delta Electronics. Digitimes is reporting today that Delta, in spite of having invested up to over $100 million on epaper production facilities at its Taiwanese plants, will hold off on bringing an ereader using the technology to market.
According to the article, Delta will continue its epaper R&D program but will focus on larger format epaper displays for periodicals and signage. The main reason cited in Delta’s decision is the negative impact tablets have had on dedicated ereader sales (presumably this is referring to the Chinese market).
I have not been overly impressed by the QR-LPD displays I’ve seen at CES. The screen refresh on the demos I’ve seen in person and in videos has been too slow, resulting in page turns that are too slow and distracting to make an effective ereader. The touchscreens of the units I saw at CES 2011 also seemed to be not very responsive, although that may have been software or hardware problems unrelated to Bridgestone’s display technology.
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Amazon tablet incoming? no comments
Lately there has been a resurgence of speculation that an Amazon tablet is imminent. This has been fueled in part by the launch of the Amazon Appstore for Android and the ongoing job openings listed for Lab 126 that would seem to indicate that Amazon is working on an Android device.
While I have no doubt that an Amazon tablet is indeed in the works, I don’t see it happening soon. A tablet from Amazon will be not just another me-too Android tablet; it will be a Kindle Tablet. This means it will not only be capable of video playback, running apps and doing the other things we expect a tablet to do, it will also be optimized for ereading — which means something other than a backlit LCD display.
The most likely display candidate would seem to be Mirasol. According to various reports, some stemming from comments dropped by Qualcomm staff working on the Mirasol project, Mirasol-based products should have been on the market by now. Last year I very over optimistically wrote that I expected we would probably have a color Kindle in the first part of this year, in part based on these reports. Obviously that was a bad call.
The most recent news that feels real to me (and is backed up by another Qualcomm press release) was that a Mirasol production facility was finally going to be equipped for mass production in the final quarter of this year and would then finally start producing Mirasol displays in quantity in early 2012. This facility, which was originally announced in a Qualcomm press release almost two years ago, has apparently only been capable of producing sample quantities until this upgrade. Reliable production of a sufficient quantity of displays will be required to meet the demand a Kindle Tablet would engender, and Amazon would not be the only device maker standing in line for the new reflective displays.
So, barring any further delays, it looks to me now as if sometime in the first half of next year will be the soonest a Kindle tablet will be shipping, although it might be announced by the end of this year and even possibly available for pre-order during the holidays. I hope I am being very overly pessimistic this time — I would love to have an Amazon tablet in my hands as soon as possible.
By the way, here is an intriguing possibility for the Kindle Tablet: Currently in the Amazon Appstore for Android you can get not only the Kindle app but also ereading apps from Kobo and Wattpad. There is no Nookbook app, although B&N may just not have submitted one yet. I wouldn’t hold my breath though — not only are Amazon and Barnes & Noble arch-competitors who share no love (but have exchanged lawsuits); B&N would look bad if their app was included in the Appstore and they did not reciprocate by having other reading apps available for the Nook Color when more apps are made available for it.
But the point is, if an Amazon Kindle Tablet were released tomorrow it appears that users would be able to not only use it practically off the shelf to read ebooks from the Kindle Store; they would also be able to access ebooks from at least some of the other ebook sellers. This makes sense, as any Amazon tablet powered by Android would probably be quickly rooted and given access to the Android Market and the ereading apps to be had therein anyway.
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Liquavista acquired by Samsung no comments
There have been reports over the past couple of days by eReaders.nl that Samsung has acquired Liquavista. Today Liquavista released a press release confirming this:
January 20, 2011 – Eindhoven – Today, Liquavista BV., announced that it has been acquired by Samsung Electronics in a buyout of all shares from the past shareholders. Under the terms of this acquisition, Liquavista will be a fully owned affiliate of Samsung Electronics.
“We are thrilled by this event” said Johan Feenstra, Liquavista’s Founder and newly appointed CEO of Liquavista, “the outright acquisition of Liquavista by the largest electronics company in the world is the fulfillment of a strategy dating back to the original spin-out and, confirmation of the disruptive potential that our technology will have in the display market.”
The acquisition has also resulted in a number of changes in Liquavista’s management team. Johan Feenstra has succeeded Guy Demuynck as the company’s CEO .
“In the future, consumers will need products that not only support full color and video but offer readability in all lighting conditions and gives them ultimate freedom and portability.” Johan Feenstra added, “Being part of Samsung, we can all be sure that Electrowetting Display Technology will find its way to the market in the fastest possible time.”
Perhaps with Samsung backing the technology it will find its way to market sooner, at least one can hope. Reflective color displays have lots of potential uses besides ereaders (which market Samsung backed out of in the US after the Kindle and Nook price drops). Like Pixel Qi, Liquavista’s electrowetting displays can be made using existing LCD production facilities with some modifications.
In display demos I’ve seen, Liquavista’s display looks better than current color e-ink from E Ink Holdings and Bridgestone’s QR-LPD displays. Mirasol appears to trump all of them however, and should also get to market sooner than Liquavista.
Update: This is the press release from Samsung:
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a global technology innovation and digital convergence leader, today announced it has acquired display technology firm Liquavista BV. Samsung completed the acquisition of Liquavista, based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, in December 2010.
Liquavista, founded in 2006 as a spin-out from the Philips Research Labs, offers a new type of electronic display technology known as electrowetting for applications in e-readers, mobile phones, media players and other mobile devices.
The electrowetting technology, which operates in transmissive, reflective, transparent and transflective modes, enables the creation of displays with bright, colorful images with dramatically reduced power consumption. Offering more than twice the transmittance of LCD technology and able to operate at low frequencies, displays utilizing electrowetting consume just 10 percent of the battery power of existing display technologies.
With the acquisition of Liquavista, Samsung aims to expand its leadership in next generation display technologies by pioneering the application of electrowetting in e-Paper and transparent displays. As electrowetting can be manufactured by modifying existing LCD production lines, Samsung will be able to realize significant synergies through the utilization of existing manufacturing equipment and capabilities.
In e-paper applications, the response time of the electrowetting displays will be more than 70 times faster than that of existing reflective displays, allowing for color videos, which was previously thought impossible. In future, the application of the technology is expected to expand to transparent, transmissive and transflective displays.
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Looking for color ereaders at CES 2011 no comments
I just got back from spending a day and a half at CES. 
The disappointing news was that there was no new color ereader announced that would be hitting the shelves here soon. I did get to see demos of three color ereaders using reflective display tech: Mirasol from Qualcomm, Hanvon’s color ereader using a color e-ink display from E Ink Holdings, and the color ereader manufactured by Delta Electronics using Bridgestone’s QR-LPD (AeroBee) display. Curiously, Liquavista did not seem to have a display this year, and the company has not even sent out any recent press releases.
Apologies on the quality of the videos – CES is extremely crowded and noisy. It also didn’t help that I started loosing my voice by the end of the first day.
Qualcomm’s Mirasol display definitely looks like the best by far of the reflective color display technologies for dedicated ereaders. The colors on both the color e-ink and QR-LPD displays were very muted. The QR-LPD display took a long time to refresh and the color e-ink seemed slower than the monochrome version as well. The QR-LPD based ereader has a touchscreen that requires a stylus. At times it seemed not very responsive, but this could have just been the demo unit – these things take a lot of abuse.
Vivitek will be distributing the Delta Electronics/Bridgestone ereader in China this year. At the booth I was told that they hope to bring it to the US in the second half of 2011. There are two sizes: an 8.2-inch model and a 13.1-inch model that seems more targeted at business users. The resolution of the QR-LPD displays is not very high: 480 x 384 for the 8.2 inch and only 800 x 600 for the 13.1-inch display. Bridgestone’s display technology will also be used for signage.
Hanvon’s color ereader will be available in China in a few months and most likely come to the US later this year.
We should see Mirasol-based ereaders some time this year from some as of yet undisclosed ereader maker (quite possibly PocketBook). Of the other technologies, I like the Liquavista display demo I saw last year better than either the color e-ink or QR-LPD solutions.
As expected there were tablets galore at this year’s CES. I really liked the Motorola tablet shown in the video below. Its guardian at the Motorola booth said that the Xoom is what the engineers at Google have and are using to develop Android 3 (Honeycomb) on (not sure if it is the only tablet they are using). This is also one of the few new tablets that comes close to matching the iPad’s battery life. Verizon will be the service provider for the Xoom tablet and it is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2011.
Another very interesting tablet from an ereading perspective is the Android-based LT-W Cloud Communicator from NEC. This is a dual 7-inch screen device that is very portable and versatile. When web browsing you can display one page in either portrait or landscape mode across both screens or have separate windows open in each screen. You can also do things like show a whole document on one screen while zooming in for a closer view on the second screen. The dual displays can either work together on one project or on separate projects. When reading ebooks the LT-W displays one page on each screen just like an open pbook. I was impressed with the LT-W and will do a separate post on it.
And finally, a couple of small bits of news I heard while touring the booths:
I was told at the M-Edge booth that the company presently has no plans to produce the waterproof Guardian Case for the Kindle 3. They were eager instead to focus my attention on their new product – MyEdge – a new service that will let you design and personalize your own Kindle and Nook jackets for about $40 and iPad jackets for $50.
At the OverDrive booth I was told that an iPad optimized version of the OverDrive Media Console that will include support for ebooks should at last be available by the end of Q1. In the meantime you can of course use the iPhone app, but it is not optimal.
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Qualcomm Mirasol fab may start production next year no comments
According to DigiTimes, the fabrication plant that will finally enable Qualcomm to begin mass production of its Mirasol reflective color displays will be ready to start production in about a year from now.
The new fabrication facility, which was originally announced about a year and a half ago, just got approval from the appropriate Taiwanese government agency in the past few days.
Reportedly Qualcomm can currently produce its Mirasol displays in volume in sizes of up to 5.7 inches, although whether it could make enough to support a popular ereader using the screen is unclear. There have been rumors recently that PocketBook would be announcing a new Mirasol-based ereader at CES, but there has been nothing official yet.
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