Last week Charbax posted this twenty minute interview with the vice president of E Ink, Sriram Peruvemba. E Ink is the company that makes the displays for all the leading ebook readers worldwide.
I hadn’t gotten around to watching the video until this morning because I thought it would be boring blah blah blahing, but it’s actually not at all, it is very informative and interesting.
For starters, did you know that the E Ink panels are only 200 microns thick? And that’s the Pearl displays, the newer color Triton displays are about half that, which is about the same as a typical sheet of paper. Also, the color displays have already started shipping in mass production to be used in ereaders (must be in Asia).
Another interesting fact, E Ink expects to sell between 25 and 30 million ereader displays this year. That’s up from 10 million last year, and 3 million the year before that.
The interview also reveals some upcoming changes for the future of E Ink. First, current displays have about 167 dpi (dots per inch). They are working on doubling that to about 300 dpi. This will add a lot more details for stuff like maps and images. Another change, the main thing that makes ereaders fragile is the glass backplane the E Ink panel is laminated to. They want to start using plastic backplanes to make ereaders more durable.
In case you didn’t know, E Ink also makes screens for a bunch of other things beside ereaders. There have E Ink watches, advertisement signs, secondary displays on cellphones, USB sticks, and they are even getting onto credit cards too.
I hope they keep researching new ways to used it. Maybe one day it could be used one laptops ou tablets..
Once they can get to 300 dpi then they may be able to show 256 shades of gray (8 bit black and white) which will make the pictures look photographic quality. 300 dpi is tight enough that the human eye will get “fooled” into thinking it’s film printed quality.
What I wish for is an e-reader with 9″ or 10″ 4:3 powered by Android (and wifi n). 300dpi even better.