Glowing Kindle
The evolution phases are one of the fascinating studies you can speculate upon. First came the era of fire, then came study lamps and believe me, that era is in passing phase. Wondering what that means? Read on for a sneak-peek into the new era.
As we speak, the Amazon’s brains are busy with their new to-be-launched debutante – The Glowing Kindle!!!
Yup! I’m not kidding and you guessed it right. I was talking about the coming self illuminant Kindle era. Definitely not a new thought, Amazon seems to have thought about this long while back. In fact, it had taken the initial steps back in the last quarter of 2010 by taking a company called ‘Oy Modilis’ under its wing. The Finnish company initially established in 1991 is one of the world’s advanced, leading light-guide technology companies, as per the Amazon claims. Despite the rumors, solid information hasn’t been provided by the firm as of now. It appears that Nooks is busy making advances to bring out a glowing e-book reader too.
Amazon’s Kindle eReader was first developed by Lab126, a subsidiary of Amazon.com. As of now, the latestKindle is of the fourth generation. It uses an E Ink electronic paper display which renders 16 shades of gray to simulate the actual reading-on-paper feel while keeping the power consumption as low as possible. This new model might be the fifth gen device. TechCrunch laid its hand on one of the pieces, and here’s the inside scoop. Though the prototype isn’t available, this new Kindle has a front-lit lighting system. Apparently, this gives it a dreamy, soft and evenly lit glow, a much better solution compared to the strong troubling LCD glow. This ‘bluish-white’ glow may not show its magic around in broad day light, but come night, and you might be awestruck. It would just work perfectly fine for viewing and will be as good as reading with a display out front, the traditional way.
The basic gist of the whole working is that the (almost) transparent panel, having a grid like predefined pattern, on top of the actual screen renders the soft glow by reflecting light from a light source. Oy Modilis has many patents in the light-guide technology field. This particular patent, regarding the glow, is available in the Google patents.
While you might wonder why you might even buy such a gadget, whose price might be way high for an eBook reader, might be a burden on your battery life, and might not be of much difference except at nights, I’m pretty sure that techies won’t be that hyped unless and until it provides a really good user experience. Anyway, it might soon hit the stands as early as the end of this year, so let’s keep our fingers crossed and wait.
Source: TechCrunch, Google patent (http://www.google.com/patents/US6773126)
Image Credits : Flex Lightning Solutions
Nikitha
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