E-ink in Color

[alanajoli]

This is more of a general question to the folks who read this journal at large than an actual blog entry (though it does have to do with today's New York Times article about Amazon acquiring a company that looks like it'll pave the way to Amazon developing something similar to an iPad -- color display, WiFi, etc.). As you all know, I'm really fond of the e-ink display. I think it makes for a superior electronic reading experience. When I was chatting with my coworkers about it, one of them who is also a photographer said that such a display would make photo editing much easier, because you wouldn't be dealing with the back-lit glare of a monitor.

According to that NYT article, it sounds like no one is using e-ink in color -- that the choice is either an e-ink display or a color display. But back in 2005, E*Ink, presumably the company that designed the technology, put out a press release (featuring the Book of Kells, unless I'm mis-identifying the image) that showed that the e-ink display could feature color. An Engaget article from April 09 shows a competition among developers to release color e-ink displays to the masses.

My question is this: why settle for a back-lit screen as the color technology (when what makes e-readers really exciting is their non-back-lit screens) when e-ink and competitors have color in progress? Is this a personal preference issue and I'm just being a dolt about it? Or are folks just tired of waiting? (While working on this, I found a Wired article that addressed my first question -- which was why, if the technology has been around since 2005, hasn't it come to the market yet. Apparently it's harder than I thought.) If you read e-books, what are your feelings about displays?

Comments

[waywardbound.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you've already answered your own question. The tech for color ink isn't ready for prime time, so people are concentrating on a realistic option in the meantime.

As for backlighting, I think most people have only ever seen backlit displays. The Kindle is the only e-ink device I'm aware of, and even I (living in the Silicon Valley) haven't actually seen one in person.

If anyone is going to popularize a color e-ink display, it's going to be Amazon. And if they say it's still several years off, then there you have it. In the meantime, most people will be more willing to buy a device that doesn't just read books. So even if Amazon does come out with a color Kindle, they'll still have a long way to go to catch up with Apple's app selection.

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Wired article definitely helped clear up the big technology end of the question -- just not necessarily the consumer end. From what I've seen in reviews of the iPad, it's not as good an e-book reader as dedicated e-book readers, and it's not as good a computer as an iMac or Netbook. In which case... why bother?

There are about 15 different e-book readers (according to one of those articles I linked to) that use the e-ink display, and again, that was the factor that convinced me that a dedicated reader was a worthwhile device. If I could read e-books as comfortably on my Netbook, I wouldn't have bothered to buy one. But I can't -- and honestly, the switch to a focus on back-lit color displays worries me a bit, because I'm afraid it means they won't finish pursuing the color e-ink. *sigh*

[waywardbound.livejournal.com]

It might not be as good an ebook reader as a dedicated one, but an iPhone isn't as good a phone as a dedicated phone either. But when a consumer decides whether or not to drop several hundred dollars on a purchase, it's easier to justify a device that meets 75% of their ebook reading needs and is also a movie/music player, gaming platform, word processor, web browser, and has thousands of cool apps to choose from, than one that meets 90% of their ebook reader needs, and does nothing else.

Color e-ink might be great for ebooks as they exist today. But since the technology is great for static content and fails at motion content, it's not going to scale well as ebooks mature. If you look at the Sports Illustrated tablet demo, you'll see how static and video are likely to begin blending into multimedia ebooks.

Ebooks are currently where movies where when the technology first started, which is to say stage productions that just happen to be filmed - a literal porting of the old medium into the new one. The coming decade will likely see a lot of innovation toward figuring out what ebooks can be *without* necessarily sticking to the constraints of a physical book. And, as much as I like the idea of color e-ink, it does have a lot of the same limitations.

To extend the metaphor, netbooks are also a lot like filmed stage plays. They fill the gap between cell phone and laptop by just being a smaller, wimpier version of a laptop. It can still do a lot of what a laptop can, but it's cramped, awkward, and often a terrible user experience (since the people designing the software/sites didn't have that form factor in mind when they made it). Tablets take a different approach, giving you a much better UI to accomplish 80% of what you really want to do on the go anyhow, and having a custom built, form-factor-appropriate UI for each piece of software.

Personally, I think this is the right approach. Not necessarily because I love the tablet format. It has a ways to go before it'll be ubiquitous. But because people will know what they're getting, and will have a much better experience with it. Most of the people buying netbooks just think they're inexpensive laptops, and don't realize how underpowered they are until it's too late. With a tablet, at least they'll know it's a secondary device they're buying, not a primary.

[holmes-iv.livejournal.com]

I suspect that most people who want a color display want something with a fairly high refresh rate, such that you can play (for example) movies and games on it. I could be behind the times, but from what I recall about the technology, trying to get an e-ink display to update at that speed would be very difficult, battery-draining, and generally unsatisfactory. So I would guess the back-lit color devices are likely to stick around indefinitely, because the color e-book market is only an incidental one for them—when color e-book readers with e-ink are available (especially textbook-format), the iPads of the world will lose out on that market, but they'll still be used for the sub-netbook computing-device market that they're really aimed at.

[sandy-williams.livejournal.com]

I think there's a difference between what readers want, and what the vocal, tech consumers the media focus on want. Most of the people who can't wait to get their hands on the iPad fall into that latter category. They want something that does everything, including reading books. People like me who read for hours at a time just want something that makes reading easy, comfortable, and convenient. I'm sticking with eink. Color eink sounds cool, but I don't need it.

To be honest, I have no desire for an iPad. It can't fit in my purse, and if I need a color screen, access to internet, email, etc. I have my laptop. Or my husband's iPad, which is small enough to carry around.