LG’s New E-Paper Promises Flexible, Color Displays

LG is promising new display technologies that would give new dimensions to electronic paper. The division, LG Display, is hoping to bring a 9.7-inch color e-paper display and a 19-inch flexible e-paper display to the market soon.

Electronic paper uses minimal power and only consumes battery when the display is being changed, like via a page flip, and has been employed in electronic book readers like the Amazon Kindle, which thus far has not been available with a color screen. Color e-paper has been shown off before by E-Ink, but observers say the results were underwhelming. For its part, LG has shown off a 14-inch A4 size color display capable of 16.7 million colors, though analysts are uncertain if color e-paper could replace the more power hungry color LCD with its quicker refresh rate in the near future. LG also makes color LCD screens as well, like the 9.7-inch IPS iPad display.

The company is also looking to bring a flexible 19-inch monochrome e-ink display to the market. A flexible display of this size could potentially target newspaper readers, much like how the 6-inch displays on current e-readers target books. The color e-ink display would be geared towards magazine subscribers.

Other than an SEC filing noting LG’s intention of mass producing these displays, the company did not announce pricing nor what devices it would target.

Casey Pham
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: e paper, e-ink, ereader, flexible display, LG