E Ink Brings Tens of Thousands of Colors to eReaders

March 1, 2023

Associate VP of Operations Timothy O'Malley describes how the company's Gallery 3 film brings full color into eBooks.

This video appeared in Electronic Design and has been published here with permission.

Check out more of our CES 2023 coverage.

E Ink has provided low-power, grey-scale, and color e-paper displays for some time now. The latter started with a few colors and now the latest version provides improved color depth. Color e-paper films have been used on BMW's color-changing car. However, the films targeting applications like e-readers provide small, individually controlled pixels for rendering text and images. Like the grey-scale version, these require power to change state but not to maintain a display, allowing for long-term operation using minute amounts of power.

I talked with E Ink's Associate VP of Operations, Timothy O'Malley, about the company's Gallery color displays (see video above). He also demonstrated now the displays can be folded (Fig. 1).

1. E Ink color displays can be folded to provide a more compact e-reader.

The current crop of displays provide more colors and can change the display more quickly. They can work for some gaming, but you will want to use a tablet or smartphone to watch videos.

E Ink also has very-low-power displays for applications like store shelf product pricing (Fig. 2). These are available in four- and seven-color versions.

2. Color e-paper displays from E Ink are showing up on store shelves. They require minimal power to update and remain unchanged when power is removed.

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William G. Wong | Senior Content Director

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