E INK has just announced that development kits for Kaleido Color E-Paper will be available from their online store in early 2021. This is the same technology that is found on the Pocketbook Color, Onyx Boox Poke Color 2 and phones from Hisense. These kits will be able to be purchased with just the e-paper display or the display and a driving board from the E INK Store.
These kits will also come with documentation and support from E INK, as well as firmware updates. They have different driving boards for e-readers, and smartphones.
Once these kits are on sale, it will really fast track the number of companies that will be working on color E INK products. Once you have the board and display, it will be quite easy to test refresh rates and develop custom applications. For established companies like Amazon, Kobo or Barnes and Noble, they can easily test everything using their existing operating system and just use the new API’s for the color filter arrays.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.