Writing about eBooks last month, I asked “where’s my ultra-thin, wave-of-the-future folding LCD screen?” Well, it was introduced today. It’s not LCD, but it mimics that technology while sidestepping the issues of bulk, inflexibility and energy consumption.
The as-yet-unnamed display panel is a joint venture of LG.Philips LCD and E Ink Corp. and billed as the first “tablet-size flexible electronic paper display.” It has a 10.1-inch diagonal and is 0.01 inches thick, about as thin and as flexible as a sheet of construction paper; it can literally be rolled up and stored in a pocket or a bag.
It stays so slim in part because it works without power or a backlight. Instead, tiny “ink”-containing capsules, each about half the width of a strand of hair, switch between black and white depending on whether they are positively or negatively charged. The result is a crisp 600x800 resolution at 100 pixels per inch with four levels of grayscale; in layman’s terms, that’s “a lot like newsprint,” according to one report.
This underlying positive/negative display technology is already used in an eBook reader introduced in Japan in the summer of 2004, the Sony Librié.
On the positive side, the Librié is portable—at seven ounces and 8x5 inches, it’s roughly book-sized. It runs on four AAA batteries, instead of proprietary, difficult-to-replace ones like certain other devices. Navigation is simple, with page-forward and page-backward buttons and the ability to digitally “bookmark” up to 40 pages. It has bells and whistles like magnification, a dictionary and a voice-reader.
But the Librié still most closely resembles a large PDA, not an ultra-thin flexible book, and when it debuted last year, it cost $380, which is steep for a single-use portable electronic device. Worse, although several hundred eBooks are available through a Sony-funded download service in Japan for only $3 each, DRM built into the Librié renders them useless after 60 days. It wasn’t clear to me from the reviews I’ve read of the device, but I’d bet the Librié doesn’t accept books in standard pdf or html formats. (Although as for Sony’s PlayStation Portable, I’d also wager there are hacks aplenty for the Librié.)
It will be interesting to see what becomes of the Philips/E Ink technology. I wonder how much bulkier and less flexible such a display panel will become once a CPU, storage device and user interface are necessarily added.