The 3 Cutting-Edge Technology for E-ink Screen
Since 2020, several color eBooks readers have been launched continuously in the market. If you check the recent articles on this blog, you will see several quick reviews about them.
The exploration of color e-ink screen began many years ago, but until now, there are only a few mature products on the market. It is a long way from the laboratory to the market.
Besides the color e-ink screen, there are still some interesting technologies in e-ink screen industry.
If these technologies can be formally applied to eBooks readers, they may brings bigger changes than color e-ink technology.
Flexible Screen
At present, even in the field of smartphones, the flexible screen is also a very novel design. Can you imagine that eBooks readers are also trying to apply flexible screens?
E-ink has shown several flexible screen prototypes, there is a 32-inch flexible electronic paper display suitable for displaying design drawings, and there is a 10-inch flexible electronic paper display for eBooks.
The 32-inch flexible electronic paper screen can display the whole architectural blueprint, and the flexible features make the product easy to carry, suitable for the field of architecture and engineering.
The 10.2-inch flexible electronic paper display is just the size of the ordinary paper book if it is folded, and it can be opened and closed freely like a real book.
Wireless Charging E-ink Screen
An important developing direction of e-ink is wireless charging.
Last year, E-ink officially joined the wireless charging alliance. E-ink technology announced that it will develop more products with wireless charging function for various scenarios in combination with the wireless charging technology promoted by the wireless charging alliance.
According to some reports, in March this year, a company called Waveshare developed an electronic paper screen that relies on NFC transmission to transmit data and energy.
This 7.5-inch e-ink display has neither a battery nor a power connection.
As we all know, the power consumption of the ink screen happens only when the content on the screen changes. There is very slight power consumption to maintain the display of still content, so NFC is able to provide the power for it.
NFC transmits data for the ink screen to control and change the display content of the e-ink screen, while providing power for it to support the screen refresh.
Of course, the energy that can be transmitted through NFC is very small compared with wired charging, so it is not suitable to be applied to devices like smartphones or tablets.
Zero delay rewritable screen
In recent years, more and more large size writable ink screen devices appear on the market, such as Sony’s DPT series, iReader’s smart series and so on.
For eBooks reader users, writing becomes a new demand after reading, and what determines the writing experience of these devices, in addition to the system’s optimization of writing function, the screen itself plays a more important role. One of the key parameters is writing delay.
By now, no matter how well the system is optimized, there must be a significant delay in writing.
Last year, E-Ink Technology demonstrated a new electronic paper film product “E Ink JustWriteTM”, which supports handwriting applications. It can draw different styles of strokes with different stylus, with a more precise sense of pressure and easier writing.
The most important thing is it makes zero delay writing com true, which is much faster than the current rewritable ink screen products.
Moreover, the erasure function of JustWriteTM is also convenient. It’s very similar to the general blackboard, so it’s very easy to write.
