Mirasol color e-paper readers due from someone soon, they say

MIRASOL ANSWERS QUESTIONS ON FACEBOOK

This is just an alert to a Kindle Forum thread about what Qualcomm's Mirasol reps are reported to have said on their Facebook page recently in response to questions.

Wiiman writes that he's been watching the discussions there.

  As most Kindlers who watch the ereader news know now, Mirasol is an e-paper technology that has similarities to e-Ink except that it's in color (muted and subdued colors) and has a fast refresh rate.  Because of that much faster refresh rate, unlike the Kindle, Mirasol screens can handle video.

  Last I heard, they were thinking of a 5" display (and the 6" screen is already too small for most PDFs, for many of us).  Wimman reports at Kindle forum the recent Qualcomm responses:

' "Hi Wei, thanks for the question.  As a display component supplier, we'd like to see our consumer-facing partners ship mirasol enabled product before the end of the year.  We'll keep you posted."

  And also from mirasol's FB page "Hi Kevin, thanks for the question and for your frequent participation.  You are exactly right about product schedule control.  We, along with our customers, expect to see products later in 2011.  That's about as specific as we can get at this point (deferring to our customers)."

 It's a known fact that Amazon has had the mirasol tech in their labs for "testing" for some time now... '

  I'm not sure why he doesn't provide links to the described quotes at Facebook.  I imagine he'll update the thread when/if he reads anything that might be of interest re Amazon.

Also, see a recent blog article here about Mirasol and ereaders:

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Discover Mag: the Kindle as "next leap forward" w/ color in 2010

Discover Magazine's Eric Wolff writes that "Wafer thin and with its low battery consumption and low-eye-strain reflective surface, [the Kindle] marks a huge leap toward blending the benefits of paper with those of computers.  But that’s only the beginning of what’s happening out there in Science Land."

'...the Kindle’s black-and-white E-Ink technology is already preparing to give way to color screens.

  ' Currently, each pixel in a Kindle is comprised of 60 tiny electronic balls, each with a black hemisphere and a white one. As described by New Scientist, in the color version, each ball will be replaced with four smaller balls of white, green, red, and blue, each of which is switched “on” or “off” by a single transistor.  Until recently, E-Ink couldn’t get transistors small enough to make this system work, but that changed last year. Now that the technology works, E-Ink expects to have color devices ready by the end of 2010.

  ' ... E-Ink devices start off with an advantage in power use, because the balls only require electricity to change from one state to the other. When the Kindle is simply displaying a single page, it uses no electricity at all. '

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