Kindles are great! I was one of those paper snobs once, advocating for physical books, relishing the smell of paper and ink, the whole show. I quickly realized, though, that first - you can have both if you like - keep your precious book collection at home (and smell it all you like), and travel with your ereader. Second, I love trees, and I’m worried about them, and paper is made out of trees.
Now, the above might be an extreme oversimplification of the matter, but Kindles (and other ereaders) lack one key component that can elevate them to new heights - color. E-Ink screens are great for battery life, and they’re easy on the eyes but if you want to read comic books, or magazines on your ereader, you’re bound to the various shades of gray (not referencing the book, for the sake of everything sacred!)
This limitation might soon be history, as the company E Ink (the one that makes those displays) has shown its next Gallery 3 screen, and… wait for it - it can display colors!
“E Ink is very excited to announce this significant breakthrough with E Ink Gallery 3,” said Johnson Lee, CEO of E Ink. “For the first time, our Gallery full color ink platform series can be offered for an enhanced reading and shopping experience for eBooks, and for colorful document viewing and editing in eNotes.”
The colors in Gallery 3 are produced by a four particle ink system: cyan, magenta, yellow and white - much like the way LCD screens get their colorful pixels. There are limitations to the system, of course, and they concern mainly update times.
The new color E-ink screen can refresh black and white pages at 350 ms, whilte there are three modes for color - a fast 500 ms mode, a standard 750-1000 ms mode, and the best color reproduction mode that takes one and a half seconds to update.
One and a half seconds might sound like an eternity but the first generation Gallery screens were refreshing in color mode at 10-second intervals! Yep, this is not the first color E-ink display but it might be the first that is advanced enough to be used in consumer products.
Foldable Kindles?
You’re probably looking at the title at this point (you’ve reached this far into the article!) and thinking “where are my foldable Kindles?” There’s no reason not to have them. In the press materials for the Gallery 3 launch, E Ink has included a demo image of an 8-inch foldable color screen, and another 8-incher - this time for rollable devices.
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Actually, E Ink will be showcasing its new color displays (including the foldable and rollable ones) at Touch Taiwan 2022 from April 27-29, 2022, in E Ink’s booth, #M802 on the fourth floor of Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, and during Display Week from May 10-12 in E Ink’s booth #626 at the San Jose Convention Center.
Which is pretty exciting! I would love to have a parchment-style rollable ereader that I can carry in my pocket like an oversized pen. And foldable Kindles also make sense - if only to recreate the two-page unfolded-book experience. The potential is there!
What do you think about it? Are you excited about a Kindle with a color display or you’re fine with the monochrome one? What about the foldable and rollable concepts?
Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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