E-Ink Holdings has many new technologies for its hardware partners this year and this is evident in a few upcoming releases. The Ectaco Jetbook Color 2 is on sale starting today and utilizes the second generation of E-Ink Triton. In essence, this gives you brighter colors due to the way the color film is added to the screen. The company also was showing off a new prototype e-reader that uses Triton 2 and Front Lite, allowing customers to get a full color experience while reading in the dark.
E-Ink Triton 2 is the next generation color display screens for your traditional e-reader. This is an added layer of film that will give customers a higher degree of contrast and better color display from the previous generation. Triton 1 had a grid of 2×2 pixels, red, green, blue, and white and used a square color filter array. Meanwhile, Triton 2 has the same color display, but instead of using square pixels it is using rectangular. It should give you 4096 degrees of color with 16 levels of each.
Not only has e-Ink developed a second generation of color, but it developed it with front lite screens in mind. During our interview with Giovanni Mancini, Project Manager at e-Ink Holdings, we talked about how the new screen has modules built into it for full color and light. He cited the new Pocketbook reader as the first device to hit the market that will have both of these new technologies bundled in the eight inch screen.
Neither Ectaco nor Pocketbook have an excellent track record for commercially viable products. They often go with the latest generation e-paper screens to woo customers over to their brand, but often skimp out on the proper hardware requirements to give the users the best experience possible. This is a great video interview that really will give you a sense of how these new screens work. We go hands on with the actual color filter, Ectaco Jetbook Color 2, and prototype devices using the latest generation hardware!
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.
