Quote:
Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck
"certainly my next reader will be a tab"
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought your diatribe against E-Ink (including jab against the supposed literary tastes of people that prefer E-Ink), and especially frontlit E-Ink as compared to backlit displays, somehow reflected your personal opinion. My mistake, I'm sure.
I refuse to get involved in an argument with a troll (you are, after all, posting in a thread about new E-Ink readers) about the contextual semantics of the statements in your posts, let's just agree to disagree about whatever you didn't say.
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I am sorry that you take that view but you seem to be wrongly interpreting that if someone claims that alternative technology reading devices are likely to take over then that is an attack on the existing ones. I am also not trolling.
First, you accuse me of being off topic, however the first post in this thread stated:
"I am only guessing.
Sony might release a Glo ereader version soon.
Because all the local retailers are cutting down the price of the Sony case with "light".
I really wish that they would come up a version with choices of Glo color.
For example: The Glo lite can be changed to green, blue and white etc.
It will allow the users to adjust the device according to their need."
That does not introduce a thread that aligns with your accusation of my being off topic "you are, after all, posting in a thread about new E-Ink readers"
My posts address, especially knowing that Sony's unlikely to come up with a lit E Ink reader this time around, why that may be i.e. the device market may be about to change. It also addresses the original poster's stated desire for a colour capable device.
You claim my post was a "diatribe against E-Ink (including jab against the supposed literary tastes of people that prefer E-Ink), and especially frontlit E-Ink as compared to backlit displays"
You will find that I make no derogatory comparison between "backlit" and "front lit" at all. In fact I tried to avoid the use of the term "back lit" (I think I succeeded) because there are competent colour display technologies, either here or soon to be here and which I had in mind, that are one or the other, or in fact neither of those. I actually mention the possibility of coloured E Ink displays but do state, sensibly I would have thought, that it has the competition of other technologies to compete with. But I take no firm stance as to which will be best and if coloured E ink wins then that is just fine by me. (Tony1988 has pointed out that colour E Ink readers exist already (I am aware of only the Pocketbook one, claimed to be the first earlier this year, but would be interested knowing the others) but my understanding is that they are really still in the development stage and are poor at producing some colours, most importantly white.)
I think that perhaps you have made the mistake of thinking that all alternative displays to front lit E Ink have to be ones that are back lit and that by extension of that you have made the mistake that any reference to a small tablet device has to mean back lit.
In fact, there are transmissive displays (back lit), reflective displays (front lit) and emissive displays (the pixels self illuminate) and all of these are in current use and continuing development.
For example, if you look at my response to Ripplinger you will see that the old phone I use and whose display I am quite happy with, has an AMOLED display. AMOLED displays are organic LED (OLED) displays that are neither front lit nor back lit, the pixels generate their own light through electroluminescence, they are of course colour capable and been in wide use for some years now. It is one that I use as a matter of choice in one device, so any accusation that I have a bias to back lit is entirely misplaced.
Among the reflective (i.e. front lit) displays now appearing are IMOD ones such as Mirasol (IMOD already in devices is mostly 2 colour only, black and one other, but Qualcomm, for example, have stated they will be producing full colour) and, among others, the possibility of colour EPD displays (Electrophoretic e.g. E Ink is an implementation of black and white EPD).
The obvious advantage of reflective is that it is usable without any power to illuminate it (as long as there is sufficient ambient light), whereas transmissive and emissive displays are totally dependant on consuming power and so less efficient from a battery use point of view. But this difference is rapidly decreasing, with the likes of OLED much more efficient than LED, for example, and improving battery technologies. So for uses where long time between charges is attractive, such as for reading, the difference between reflective and non reflective displays is diminishing. For example, some small device manufacturers are now claiming 70 hours of continuous video (which is much more power hungry than ebook reading); that means at least a couple of weeks reading if one read 8 hours a day.
So what I have been saying is that there are display technologies here, or about to appear, which seem capable of displacing current greyscale E Ink and that small tablets are also now also appearing (i.e. 6 - 8 inch, but often expensive compared to readers as they include the likes of phone and other cellular connectivity, cameras, GPS, etc.). A convergence of those things seems to me to be likely very soon into low priced simple colour tabs which are competent at reading, have wireless connectivity, audio and sufficient power and competent O/S for web browsing, email, imagery display and other applications, and so meet the needs of a wide market.
Grey scale E Ink, nor any other grey scale either back or front lit, will not appear competitively in in such tablets for obvious utility reasons; colour is what the major small tab market will want, and with colour displays the readers of ebook have the choice of either doing so in grey scale or colour. It would seem to me that readers as we now know them do not have a long future, and what I have been saying is perhaps an answer to the original poster's post.
If you have got this far I hope you see that your accusations are entirely incorrect, I am just setting out what I see to be a very strong case as to the direction ereaders may likely head very soon. Of course, I may be wrong and in the year 2020 people will only be buying the current generation lit E Ink ones; somehow I think that will not be the case.