Eink displays

Eink displays are paper like displays used in e-readers. The film used in Eink displays have a Electrophoretic or electronic ink as the optical component. Eink displays have a tiny microcapsules, which are of diameter of hair. These microcapsules have a large number of positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles. These particles are suspended in a fluid, which upon applied electric field moves to the top of the display and are then visible. These Eink displays also support a digitizer (stylus) and capacitive touch solutions as like LCDs.

How is it different from normal LCDs?

Normal LCDS have a backlight which projects through the display on to our eyes. These Eink displays doen't have a backlight. they reflect the ambient light on to readers eyes there by enabling visibility. That is why Eink displays are also called reflective displays.

Advantages of Eink displays:

• Low power consumption there by long battery life.
• Ease on eyes when compared to colorful displays
• Can retain image even when power is removed where as LCD has to be self refreshed almost 30 times per second to retain display

Disadvantages of Eink displays:

• No color displays and just used for text display. Innovations happening still to add colours.
• Absence of ambient light reduces redability. Amazon Paperwhite providing a solution to this by mounting 4 LEDs at the bottom.
• Inability to display videos

Devices/Processors supporting Eink displays:

• iMX6 dual Lite Processor
• Amazon Kindle
• Amazon Paperwhite
• Sony, Motorola, Samsung also using the same technology for some of their devices

Innovations in using Eink displays:

A latest research by Intel combined with other universities, showed addition of secondary display to an Android phone using NFC technology. Android phone powered a NFC-WISP (Wireless identification and sensing platform) using NFC. The WISP has a 2.7" Eink display, with a 1mAh battery, 0.5MB FRAM and a wireless power harvester. The NFC-WISP was brought near Android phone and was powered using NFC interface taking advantage of inductive coupling.