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wallcraft · 06-09-2009, 08:24 AM

The technology trends that argue against EInk long term are: a) color, b) refresh rate, c) battery capacity.

I don't know that color is essential, except for magazines, but if there is a color screen alternative that is almost as good it will win. Battery capacities per unit weight or volume are increasing, and the "all day" device is taking over from the "3 hour" device. So EInk's battery longevity advantage is under attack. But the killer is refresh rate. This isn't for movies, it is for every application ever written with a GUI interface. They all assume a fast screen refresh rate. The iRex DR1000S is the first device to try to address this systematically by patching the GTK+ library, but today you can't use an EInk screen in a general purpose device because of the refresh rate. Screens in general purpose devices get a huge advantage in the volume of units made. It is hard to see how EInk, or e-paper, competes in the long term if it is only for dedicated reading devices.

In a sense, e-paper has already won. Pixel Qi would probably not be talking up its "e-paper-like" mode quite so much without the success of the EInk Readers.

06-09-2009, 08:24 AM	#15
wallcraft reader Posts: 6,977 Karma: 5183568 Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Mississippi, USA Device: Kindle 3, Kobo Glo HD	The technology trends that argue against EInk long term are: a) color, b) refresh rate, c) battery capacity. I don't know that color is essential, except for magazines, but if there is a color screen alternative that is almost as good it will win. Battery capacities per unit weight or volume are increasing, and the "all day" device is taking over from the "3 hour" device. So EInk's battery longevity advantage is under attack. But the killer is refresh rate. This isn't for movies, it is for every application ever written with a GUI interface. They all assume a fast screen refresh rate. The iRex DR1000S is the first device to try to address this systematically by patching the GTK+ library, but today you can't use an EInk screen in a general purpose device because of the refresh rate. Screens in general purpose devices get a huge advantage in the volume of units made. It is hard to see how EInk, or e-paper, competes in the long term if it is only for dedicated reading devices. In a sense, e-paper has already won. Pixel Qi would probably not be talking up its "e-paper-like" mode quite so much without the success of the EInk Readers.