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We’ve seen color e-readers before, even colored e-paper displays. But in 2011, Chinese e-reader maker Hanvon will ship the first color reader with a screen made by Cambridge’s E Ink themselves.
According to the New York Times, Hanvon will announce their new e-reader at Tuesday’s FPD International 2010 trade show in Tokyo. Sporting a 9.68-inch color touch screen, Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity, it will retail in China in March 2011 for about $440.
The reader uses a standard E Ink screen with a color filter, so it has the same low-power, lightweight, high-readability characteristics of its black-and-white cousins. But this also means the screen is more-or-less static: it can show color photographs, illustrations and possibly some animation, but not full-motion video. Without a power-hungry backlight, the colors won’t be as bright as an LCD screen either.
Other features of the device remain unclear. Hanvon is known for its handwriting technology, which it packages with some but not all of its e-readers; the NYT is silent on whether the new device includes it. Business users, who are the device’s target market, are often more receptive to a stylus interface than the general consumer market; introducing color could make a stylus appealing to illustrators as well.
The long-term trajectory of color e-paper displays is even less clear, even as more-capable products from E Ink, Mirasol and Pixel QI come to the market. Color plays a different role in reading than it does in video or gaming. Will color illustrations be enough to satisfy readers, or will they drift towards LCD screens and tablets?
The short version is that consumers want everything: vibrant color and full video with low power consumption and zero glare at an unbeatable price. Until that arrives, we’ll continue to see both makers and readers in this space accepting tradeoffs and experimenting to find a balance that works.