Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
You know, I'm really skeptical that there are actually "different grades" of Pearl e-ink used on e-readers.
AFAICT, for 4 years no one has heard about these different grades. When Pearl came out, its 50% greater contrast was heavily advertised and featured, but no one talked about different grades of Pearl. If there really were different grades, anyone any company using a better grade of pearl would use that fact to beat their competition over the head with...and rightly so. But that never happened.
The only evidence we have for the different grades is from a second hand report we heard of from Tom's Hardware, who apparently called e-ink and learned this heretofore unknown fact. But we don't really know who they talked to, what questions they asked, or what kind of response they actually got. For all we know (and in fact, this is my assumption), they were asked how come some screens are better than others, and the response that there are different grades meant just that some are pearl and some are older vizplex. And not that there are different grades of Pearl.
And even if there were different grades of Pearl, I would be surprised if it were revealed in this way.
"Hello, E-ink, I have a question about Amazon? You know, your largest customer? How come some of their screens on the K4 look different?"
"Hello, random tech blogger. Well, we've never told anyone this yet, but there are are actually different grades of Pearl. And our largest customer - well, this is highly confidential, but they might be using Pearl B instead of Pearl A. Have a nice day!".
Anyway, for both of those reasons, I'm seriously skeptical.
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I too am a bit skeptical about the idea from a supplier standpoint.
I have no doubt, however that there are:
1) Variances in batches during production-to tell the truth, the technology has always sounded both a bit magical and a bit rube goldbergesque to me-I'm amazed they actually got it to work so well. "There are these white balls and these black balls..."
2) Variances, both intentional and unintentional, in how various manufacturers calibrate/control the screens thru software and hardware.
One thing I'm curious about is how power management and CPU/GPU power play a role in the quality of the screen display/refreshing. One thing about the eInk devices to date-none of them have (need?) high powered CPUs/GPUs, and all of them have incredible battery life. And all the tech demos of full screen animation without ghosting/screen blanking are seemingly done with custom hardware with powerful CPUs and I assume, wired power, not battery power.
I have a feeling there may be a lot more life in the technology if this is the case, as CPU power goes up and prices go down-higher density, higher contrast screens with imperceptible refresh rates.