Bridgestone QR-LPD e-Paper supports ink

The e-Paper space continues to grow. This time Bridgestone shows off its latest e-Paper technology, QR-LPD at Display 2009. In the following video you get to see the technology shown up close. It’s quite impressive:

The technology has been in development for a couple years. Like other eInk technologies it’s a persistant ink technology that continues to display a page even when the power is turned off. It also shares with other eInk technologies, the ability to print the display on very thin rolls of plastic. In this age of growing thin devices, this is a big win for thinness and ruggedness, because glass is no longer needed. The challenge is getting the display rate up (when switching content) as well as the DPI. In this case, the resolution is 80dpi. With 80 dpi an image looks reasonably well, but text looks passable.

One nice bit of tech in this demo is the integrated Wacom digitizer. The ink is a little thick because of the display’s dpi, but it’s not bad. Also, this technology supports color and slightly faster refresh rates than some other attempts. Again, not bad. It kind of reminds me of the first generation color LCD displays I saw in the 90’s at COMDEX which could only be run for 15 minutes at a time before overheating. We’ve come a long way in a couple decades. The next two decades look to be shaping up with some cool innovations too with ePaper.

I am very excited about where ePaper technology is going because potentially we’ll have very thin, lightweight page sized devices with touch and pen input. Yep, a true, next generation slate. It’s time to forget the clumsily thick slates and Tablet PC convertibles of days gone by. Think iPhone thin. The time is coming.