How E Ink's Triton Color Displays Work, In E-Readers and Beyond - Wired News

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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Apple`s White iPhone Delays Causing Color Coordination Angst - eWeek

Apple executives are attempting to comfort customers dismayed by Oct. 27 news reports that the eagerly-awaited White iPhone would be delayed until spring. Apple is claiming that production of a phone with white plastic proved significantly more challenging than production of the same phone with black plastic. For reasons that remain obscure, iPhone fanciers have been waiting with bated breath for the white version. 

After a few minutes of in-depth research on the problem with white iPhones, I?ve been able to make some basic determinations as to what might be going on here, really. Clearly, making a phone white does not strain the limits of phone production technology. After all, Western Electric was making white phones back in the days of rotary dials. Since that time a number of companies, including Panasonic and General Electric have sold white cordless phones. So the color white clearly does not preclude the phone-worthiness of a device.

Nor does being white keep a smart phone from working. Rim has been making white BlackBerries for a couple of years, and has just announced a new version of the Bold, running BlackBerry OS 6.0, that will come in white. So it has to be something besides manufacturing. Some Apple sources say it?s because the white home button doesn?t match the case. But that reason is also clearly bogus since the existing black iPhone cases and the black buttons don?t match either.  

No, something more sinister is at work here. Perhaps Apple is suffering a case of political correctness run amok? Perhaps by creating a white iPhone, Apple might lose its status of being the coolest phone out there. Or perhaps they?re afraid of being too much like RIM, which is, after all, from Canada, not California which is the home of all that?s cool (as differentiated from cold, which is what Canada has to offer). 

On the other hand, perhaps it?s fear of losing a competitive advantage. After all, Android phones are available in silver and black, but not white. Is this the fear of losing the silver and black market to the Android masses? Think about it. The hyper successful Droid line from Verizon Wireless is black. Most BlackBerries are black, except for those which are red or purple or gold or whatever. Perhaps black is the color of success in phones, just like in the old days when pay phones were all black. 

Or, perhaps the black iPhones have priority on the secret underground iPhone production line because Verizon Wireless likes black phones and there simply isn?t capacity for white phones on the same line. Sometime next spring, after Apple has sold Verizon Wireless its ten million black iPhones, the production lines will free up and they can start using up that supply of non-matching white cases that have been gathering dust since July. After all, who is really going to care if the white home button doesn?t match the white case? Who is even going to be able to tell? They?re on different sides of the phone, after all.

But if white is that big a problem, maybe it might be better if Apple chooses some other color. Granny Smith Green, perhaps? Delicious Red? That won?t come with the marketing baggage of the white iPhone, and it?ll be a lot less boring. And they ARE Apple colors, right? 

There are, of course, solutions. The most obvious is spray paint. The advantage is that you can have a white iPhone in seconds. It?s also cheap, readily available, and if you let it dry properly it won?t cause too many serious health hazards. The primary downside is that you have to be careful what part of the phone you paint. 

And of course, you can buy up scrap Western Electric white phones, melt them down into a nice batch of phenolic resin and cast the iPhone parts from that. The resulting phones will be white, they?ll be cheap and rugged. The fact that they?ll weigh three pounds each is a small price to pay for a white iPhone. 

And of course, you can take a marketing lesson from Steve Jobs and simply deny that your black iPhone is actually black. You can hold a press conference and explain that it?s just a different kind of white, that the whole discussion is just the media causing ?black case gate.? If you think about it, the case is the color it should be. Calling the case black will just show that you?re out of touch. 

Or, of course, you can just wait until Apple gets its act together to make white phones. But where?s the fun in that? 

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Barnes & Noble introduces Nook Color - Afterdawn.com

Barnes & Noble has introduced the new Nook Color e-reader this week, hoping to gain an advantage over the rival Amazon Kindle in the quickly growing e-reader market. The Nook Color will use an IPS LCD screen, the same type of display used by the Apple iPad.

Barnes & Noble's new Nook Color will be 7-inches, run Android 2.1, and have eight-hour battery life per charge. Current Nooks and Kindles (using e-ink displays) have battery lives as long as two weeks per charge.

The display will have 1024x600 resolution with 16 million colors.

Additionally, the device has Wi-Fi (but lacks 3G), 8GB of internal storage and a microSD slot.

The Nook Color will also launch with deals with magazine publishers, a strong advantage over black-and-white e-readers.

Available at Best Buy, Wal-Mart and online starting November 19th, the e-reader will cost $250.

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