Qualcomm mirasol color video ebook readers to ship in 2010

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by Timoleon

Two things I wonder about with Mirasol:
1) Low yield rates for larger displays. The display in the video is tiny!
2) Washed out colors. Even Obama looks sickly in the sample picture. Apparently, the tolerances for angles of viewing are very low with this thing.

I hope they get this sorted out.

Yields are probably still so low at this point that in order to supply all the demo devices that its just a lot easier to go with those smaller screens rather than cherry picking the full-size working displays from a batch.

The colours did seem better on the video so until we see more photos we can't really be sure of how the thing actually works in practice.

Anyway, here's another article on the display from engadget this time http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/18/q...to-be-on-trac/

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by badbob001

C'mon e-ink, you've been sitting on the same displays for years. How about getting Epson's 385ppi (3104 x 4128) version to market?

Even those old Epson prototypes seem a bit behind this technology in terms of resolution. Since in order to achieve color you would have to divide the pixels with an RGBW filter. After which, going by existing color eInk prototypes, you would be left with around 192ppi.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by badbob001

C'mon e-ink, you've been sitting on the same displays for years. How about getting Epson's 385ppi (3104 x 4128) version to market?

Probably because the yield on such devices is incredibly low. Wouldn't be surprised if the one in the picture were the only sample they'd managed to get without a defect.

Originally Posted by Timoleon

Two things I wonder about with Mirasol:
1) Low yield rates for larger displays. The display in the video is tiny!
2) Washed out colors. Even Obama looks sickly in the sample picture.

The gamut of a device using reflective colour will always be far lower than one using transmissive technology - anyone working with print knows the important of proofing because even a high-quality offset print will never be as rich and deep as a wide-gamut LCD or CRT. A lot of this is because a reflective display is dependent on the quality of the light-source used to view it and much of the rest is down to the limitations on contrast. It would be reasonable to aim for a gamut that's similar to 4-colour newsprint, and the 2nd picture on slashgear looks like they've got pretty close.

Since this is about ebooks, my responses are:
More dpi - woohoo!
Fast refresh so no page-turn flash - very nice
colour and video - well that's OK I guess.

[kaas]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Isn't that the one which takes about 30s to refresh the page?

Hi Harry,

you mean the Flepia from Fujitsu. Here the specs:

Specifications
Dimensions, Weight 158mm (Width) × 240mm (Height) × 12.5mm (Depth. Thinnest section: 11.3mm) , Weight: 385g
Screen Size 8-inch (123.6mm x 164.8mm)
Unit Colors White or Black
Resolution 768 dots x 1024 dots (XGA)
Number of Displayable Colors 260,000 colors (3 Scans); 4,096 (2 Scans); 64 colors (1 Scan)
Re-Draw Speed 1.8 seconds (1 Scan), 5 seconds (2 Scans), 8 seconds (3 Scans)
Wireless LAN (embedded) IEEE802.11b/g（11/54Mbps *1）
Bluetooth Bluetooth Ver2.0+EDR
Memory SD Memory Card*2 (Maximum up to 4GB)
USB Connector USB2.0 (480Mbps) mini-B connector × 1
Audio Stereo speakers (embedded), headphone connector x 1
Power Supply Lithium polymer battery (embedded), AC adaptor
Fully-charged continuous operation： 40 continuous hours
(Conditions: Display of 2,400 pages/at 1 minute per page/with 64 colors)
Content Storage Capacity (when used with a 4GB SD card) Equivalent to 5,000 paper-based books when each book is 300 pages long with 600KB per book
Security 128Bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard)
Software FLEPia application, Japanese version Microsoft Windows CE5.0, Japanese e-book viewers: BunkoViewer (XMDF), T-Time (.book)
CPU (embedded) XScale RISC CPU
Environmental Operating Conditions Operation: Temperature range: 5 to 35 degrees Celsius, Humidity: 20 to 80% RH
Storage: Temperature range: - 10 to 50 degrees Celsius, Humidity: 20 to 80% RH

[Daithi]

Qualcomm could make a really cool eReader, especially if they add some of their other technology lines into the device:
__ - Color display with full video support (Mirsasol)
__ - 1 Ghz PC processor (Snapdragon)
__ - Television over 3G (FLO TV)

I think the 5.7" screen is too small, but I'd love to have a device like this that is only a third of an inch thick and has a 10 or 11 inch screen. I can see the future and its color in motion.

[PKFFW]

I'm glad the picture is a mock up cause it is one ugly reader!

If everything is about equal(price, battery, etc) then I look forward to seeing any reader with one of these for a screen.