E Ink is probably best known for making the paper-like electronic displays used in Kindle, Nook, and Kobo-style eBook readers. But the company also makes displays used for industrial and commercial products including digital signage and whiteboards.
Today the company announced that its E Ink Prism displays are now available in seven color options, allowing designers to build interactive displays into architecture.
And recently the company showed off a new foldable grayscale display that could be used for eBook readers that fold up… like a book.
While there aren’t any products currently scheduled to ship with the new foldable display, E Ink says it’s ready to start mass producing the screen once it lines up customers.
The display is a 10.2 inch E Ink Carta Mobius display with 220 pixels per inch. It uses plastic rather than glass, which allows it to fold almost in half (although there is a bit of a gap where the device actually folds.
For the most part, the new foldable display looks just like any other E Ink screen, but the demo version does appear to have a somewhat glossy finish, which might make it hard to see in some lighting conditions.
E Ink’s new Prism displays for architecture, meanwhile, aren’t exactly full-color displays. Instead, they’re black and blue (for example) instead of black and white.
The 7 color options are dark blue, cyan, red, green, yellow, brown, and black. Like other E Ink displays, they use bi-stable ink technology, which means they can show a static image indefinitely without drawing any power, and they’re reflective, which means they don’t need any illumination to be easily visible in direct sunlight.
I like this because I won’t have to worry about scratching the screen when it’s in my bag. Easier to pack as well. Large screen but small packed sized.
That glossy screen is a turn off though.
Technically cool, but the folding feature in particular… I started using e-readers to get away from the fold. Sure, it’s probably easier to hold this open when reading in bed, but still.