E INK intends to announce E INK Gallery 3 in the coming weeks. This e-paper technology has traditionally been reserved for digital signage, the new E INK Gallery Plus combines signage with the advanced color E-Paper display on ACEP, which can display more than 50,000 colors, but the refresh rate is horrible and only good with static images. Gallery 3 has E INK Carta HD compatibility and possibly E INK Regal waveform controllers for smooth, ghosting-free image transitions. It remains to be seen exactly how many colors can be displayed and what are black and white and color PPIs. Well, we won’t have to wait long, as E INK will probably make the official announcement on April 27 at Touch Taiwan. They have one Block of 15 minutes reserved for the presentation.
We know a little about Gallery 3, thanks to a Taiwanese entry E INK. It is said “Significantly improves the page turning speed of color images to 1 second, which is equivalent to the page turning speed of black and white e-paper used in e-book readers. The operating temperature of the E Ink Gallery 3 meets the application specifications of e-book readers and is suitable for displaying colorful digital content such as picture books, manuals and magazines. In addition, this technology combines digital handwriting and touch functions to create a color electronic paper notebook, which can realize color digital note-taking and drawing functions.
How does this technology compare to E INK Kaleido 3? K3 color electronic paper uses RGBW to display 4,000 color combinations. Gallery 3 uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, in addition to various shades of gray. It remains to be seen exactly how many different color combinations will be possible and whether RGBW will provide a better experience than CMYB. E INK told me that their new Comfort Gaze front light technology is not exclusive to Kaleido 3, so it should be possible to integrate this technology into Gallery 3 e-readers and eNotes.
There are tons of questions I have. It seems that Kaleido 3 and Gallery 3 are competing with the same target demographic, e-readers and e-notes. What other factors come into play? Without further details, I assume that Gallery 3 will be more affordable and will mainly target 4-6 inch screens, while Kaleido 3 is optimized for larger screens, such as 7.8, 10.3 and 13.3.
Michael Kozlowski has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for twelve years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and The New York Times. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
