Upcoming color E Ink display is ‘milestone,’ but still can’t do video
By Ben Patterson
A Chinese company is primed to launch a color e-reader early next year—and unlike the recent Nook Color from Barnes & Noble, the new device will have an actual E Ink display (similar to those on the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader) rather than going the LCD way (like the iPad).
But the upcoming Hanvon e-reader, slated to be unveiled Tuesday at a Tokyo trade show (according to the New York Times), will also come saddled with several of the inherent drawbacks of current E Ink technology—particularly a glacial refresh rate that renders smooth, full-motion video next to impossible.
Hanvon's 9.68-inch, touch-enabled e-reader is poised to go on sale next March in China for about $440—almost the same price as the 16GB iPad—according to the Times.
The slate uses a color display developed by E Ink, which manufacturers the black-and-white e-paper display on such current e-readers as the Kindle, the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble's original, monochrome Nook.
The secret, the Times reports, is a color filter that sits atop the usual black-and-white E Ink display.
The Hanvon reader will also support Wi-Fi and 3G, says the Times, and it'll be primarily aimed at business users.
Of course, it's not like we haven't already seen color e-readers here in the U.S. There's the iPad, of course, not to mention Barnes & Noble's new Android-based Nook Color.
But the iPad and Nook Color tablets use traditional LCD displays, which can be hard to read outdoors and are battery hogs compared with E Ink readers like the Kindle, which keep going and going ... and going, for days and even weeks at a time.
The Hanvon color E Ink slate will also have extra-long battery life, the Times reports, and it will be nearly as easy to read outdoors as current black-and-white E-Ink devices.
Just don't expect to watch episodes of "Mad Men" on the Hanvon. As with the Kindle, the Sony Reader and the first Nook, the E Ink display on the Hanvon reader can't refresh nearly as fast as an LCD screen can, resulting in "simple animations" at best—and no video, of course, says the Times.
Even the color images themselves on the Hanvon are "muted" like a "faded color photograph," and the color filter "does reduce the brightness" on the E Ink display, the story continues.
So while a commercially available color E Ink reader probably is a "milestone" in the e-reader market, as one analyst told the Times, it'll still represent a trade-off—one that some players in the e-reader field, like Amazon, still appear unwilling to make.
Back in July, when Amazon unveiled its revamped Kindle, I asked Amazon reps when a color and/or touchscreen Kindle might be on the way—and the answer I got was that for the "vast majority" of readers, a sharp black-and-white screen is "a feature, not a bug." The Amazon spokesperson also argued that an extra layer of touch-sensitive glass would cut down on the contrast of the screen, which would be too high a price to pay given that Kindle users spend most of their time simply tapping the "next page" button over and over.
So for now, it appears we're still years away from the holy grail of display technology: a screen that looks great outside, works for days and weeks on a single charge, and is fast enough to display razor-sharp video, just like LCD.
At least the Hanvon e-reader sounds like a step in the right direction, albeit a small one.
New York Times: Color Comes to E Ink Screens
(Yahoo!)
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應該是E Ink材質游動速度不如光速所致 ?