Cambridge, MA-based E Ink Corporation, the manufacturer of e-book reader displays for the Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader Digital Book, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and others, is making great strides with their next generation display technologies, E Ink Pearl and Triton. In addition to 16 levels of grayscale, Triton is capable of displaying thousands of colors. The Pearl display creates a dramatic increase in contrast, giving eReaders a contrast ratio close to that of a paperback book. E Ink has also improved the rendering performance of their displays (a common complaint of first generation Kindle owners) by 20%. Ruggedness (see video below) and low power consumption are additional benefits of the latest E Ink displays.
All of these innovations add up to significant benefits for researchers: extra battery life for those conducting remote field research; color for teaching and learning applications that require maps, charts, images, and other graphics; ruggedness for K-12 learning activities on mobile devices; long-form reading comfort (when compared to LCD backlit displays) for scholarly books and articles, etc.
