Good Summary of the Current Scene re: Tech for Color eBooks

NYTimes.com:

BLACK-AND-WHITE movies have their film noir appeal, yet it’s glowing color that rules on most consumer displays these days, with one exception: the pages of e-book readers. There, color is still supplied the old-fashioned way — not by filtered pixels, but by readers’ imaginations."

Now that stronghold of austere black letters is crumbling. “We expect companies to market color e-book readers if not by the holidays, then soon after,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst specializing in consumer product strategies at Forrester, the market research company. “And some consumers will definitely opt for them.”

... Major e-reader companies like Amazon.com, which sells the Kindle, and Barnes & Noble, seller of the Nook, have not announced that they are offering color versions, or that they are committed to a specific technology for doing so. But some smaller entrants in the market have said they will be using liquid crystal displays, just as the iPad does.

The Literati by the Sharper Image, for example, has a a full-color LCD and will go on sale in October, priced at about $159. And Pandigital has said that the Novel, its full-color e-reader with an LCD touch screen, will be at retailers this month at a suggested price of about $200.

But LCD displays have disadvantages ... They consume a lot of power, he said, because they need backlighting and because much optical energy is lost as light passes through the polarizers, filters and crystals needed to create color. They are also hard to read outdoors ...
 
Other types of displays may also find a foothold with consumers — particularly low-power, reflective technologies that take advantage of ambient light and are easy to read when outside. The EInk Corporation in Cambridge, Mass., uses this reflective technology for its present product — the black-and-white displays in the Kindle, Nook and other e-readers — and will soon introduce a color version of the technology, said Siram Peruvemba, E Ink’s vice president for global sales and marketing. The technology will probably first be used for textbook illustrations and for cartoons.

The E Ink color displays, which have had many prototypes in the last two years, have not yet found favor with Kindle. “We’ve seen E Ink color displays in the lab and they aren’t ready,” Stephanie Mantello, a senior public relations manager for Kindle at Amazon.com, wrote in an e-mail.

Ken Werner of Nutmeg Consultants in Norwalk, Conn., and a specialist in the display industry, says that he has viewed the E Ink prototypes and that their reflective color technology is worthwhile.

“If you are expecting these reflective color panels to look like an LCD TV or an iPad, you’ll be disappointed,” he said. “They are not going to have that depth and range of color.” But, he said, the displays are valuable because of their low power consumption, thinness and light weight.

E Ink will ship its color displays to device makers in late fall, Mr. Peruvemba said. Hanvon Technology, in Beijing, a maker of e-book readers, will be one of the first customers, he said.

The color filters used in the displays block some of the light, but the loss is offset by an improved ink formulation that yields higher contrast, he said; the color display consumes no more power than previous monochromatic displays.

Reflective color displays from Qualcomm will also be on the market soon, said Jim Cathey, vice president for business development at the Taiwan office of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, based in San Diego. The company’s color technology, called mirasol, will be shipped to device makers this quarter, and should be available to consumers in the first quarter of next year, he said.

Mirasol dispenses with color filters, as its name suggests — it combines the Spanish words “mira,” for look, and “sol,” for sun, into a play on the English word “mirrors.” The pixels in the display use tiny, mirrorlike elements in optical cavities to selectively reflect ambient red, green or blue light — much as sunlight bounces off a bird’s feathers. The pixels switch fast enough to run video, he said.

Ms. Epps of Forrester also thinks sales of e-book readers, whether in color or black-and-white, will withstand competition from the iPad and others. “We see the market bifurcating into two separate arenas with two different price ranges,” she said — with one group opting for multifunctional slates like the iPad, and the other for e-book readers.

Color is not likely to be the most important lure for those bookish buyers. “When you ask e-book consumers what are the features they care about, it’s not color,” she said. “Market expectations are driving that innovation. Readers care more about features like durability.”

Pandigital Novel Hampered by Poor Display, Unresponsive Interface

 Whoops. Washington Post: "The Pandigital Novel makes a valiant attempt at being a value-priced, full-color, Android-based e-reader that also doubles as a general-use tablet. Unfortunately, it falls short of its mark. At $175 (price as of August 10, 2010), the Novel is expensive compared with Amazon's newest, $139, single-purpose, E-Ink-based Kindle e-reader. And as a tablet/e-reader combo that tries to compete with Apple's iPad, the Novel is slow and inelegant, and lacks the full versatility that a true tablet user expects."

Pandigital Novel (Black) Review

Techlicious: "In May, Pandigital came out with the white Novel, the first Android-based ebook reader, which promised to run Android apps at some point in the future. Today, an upgraded model, the black Pandigital Novel, hits store shelves for $199–without apps, but with the promise still intact. The only significant difference between the white and black models is size. ..."

How to Hack the Pandigital Novel

From The Digital Reader:

I didn’t go all the way and actually root the Novel. Instead I stopped after I installed a replacement home screen (so I could run other apps). I had trouble finding a home screen that I could download. For the most part they are only in the Marketplace and I don’t have access. Eventually I found Panda Home, and it seems to be working okay.

Installing apps on the Novel requires the use of the command line (that’s what works for me) but the process is relatively easy. You can’t use the new apps from the existing home screen, so you’ll also need to install a new home screen. I have Aldiko, Kindle, Fictionwise eReader and Kobo apps installed. I’d forgotten how much I liked Aldiko. ...

Bottom Line: Pandigital's "Novel" Will Be - In Fact, Already IS - Dead on Arrival

Endgadget's Joanna Stern seems not impressed at all. To this I'll add the simple fact that for the same money readers can get the Nook WiFi. Stern:

Sure, Pandigital's Novel may be delayed until next month because of some firmware issues -- and we haven't heard the most positive things about the 7-inch LCD based e-reader / tablet -- but we had to check it out for ourselves. At $149, the all-plastic reader isn't going to win any build quality awards (it's also rather heavy for what it is), but the Android 2.1-powered gadget does have a pretty attractive user interface. In use, however, the resistive screen had to be pressed quite firmly to make selections and the software was noticeably sluggish. Surprisingly, the device did play a standard definition video smoothly and it has an accelerometer -- which is more than the Archos 7 Home Tablet can brag. Barnes & Noble's Android app will be preloaded, and it also has a skinned Android browser of some sort. ... you've got the picture here: the Novel isn't what we'd call novel, you just get what you pay for.

Pandigital "Novel" eReader

From Twice:

[Pandigital] said it has reached a deal with national book retailer Barnes & Noble to supply e-books and other electronically published content for a full-color, multimedia e-reader called the Pandigital Novel, model PRD07T10WWH7. It is set to ship in June at a $199 suggested retail, through retailers including Kohl's; Bed, Bath & Beyond; Macy's; and other leading retail accounts, the company said. Panadigital expects to reach 33,000 storefronts with the product by the fall.

The Novel shares many of the characteristics of Apple's iPad, which recently launched to great acclaim, including a full-color touchscreen LCD (800 by 600 resolution), the ability to use multiple apps for a variety of applications, and such multimedia capabilities as playing digital photos, music and some video content (at launch the device will not support Flash-based video).

Unlike the Apple product, however, the first iteration of the Novel features a smaller 7-inch screen and runs on Google's Android software platform, which will run some of that system's non-cellphone-specific apps.

Recognizing that access to content was paramount to a successful launch, the company reached an agreement with the Barnes & Noble eBook Store to provide purchasers access to e-book content. The Novel will support a variety of e-book file formats, including EPUB, HTML and PDF. A majority of the titles from Barnes & Noble are expected to be offered in EPUB.

The Novel includes Wi-Fi connectivity to access content online directly through the device. ...