Qualcom, a Taiwanese electronics company, have announced that by some time in 2012 they will be in full production of a revolutionary form of ereader screen that will give us full colour for our ereaders.

Important note:  Since writing this post, Qualcomm have announced the launch of the Kyobo ereader with Korean book sellers Kyobo.  Using their Mirasol screen….   So we were all on the wrong foot with this one!  Here is the link to a post about this newest ereader

Once again we are being told that a company has come up with the perfect way of giving us coloured screens and battery endurance for our ereaders. This system goes under the name of Mirasol – I shall explain later why this is actually a rather good name.

I am rather skeptical about this, as we have been promised various wonder systems over the last couple of years, all of which promised us screens that we can use in bright light, have long battery endurance and would give us bright colours..  In other words exactly what we now get with LCD screens without the drawbacks of LCD screens.

I have written about quite a few of these wonder techniques, and as with large screen ereaders, mostly they have simply faded away and never appeared on the market… so called vapour ware…..

Sadly Qualcomm is one of those companies who have been promising us wonders like this now for some time, and over and over again, the launch date gets put back….

There is a lot of talk on the blogosphere about this latest one, but remarkably little hard info, and so far I have not managed to find any photos or videos demonstrating how bright and rich these colours actually are, and Qualcom is being very vague about exactly what it is offering ereader makers, no public details of resolution, number of colours possible, refresh rates and so on.  All we have is an old video (made about a year ago) which demonstrated an early version of this technology, and which wasn’t too impressive.

Having made these caveats, I have to admit that the actual technology is fascinating and rather hard to explain, so I shall quote from their description of the technology:

The Mirasol display makes color in the same way as the wings of iridescent butterflies or peacock feathers—by being an imperfect mirror that tunes the color of incoming light before reflecting it back to the viewer.

In a Mirasol display, this is done by small cavities known as interferometric modulators, tens of microns across and a few hundred nanometers deep, beneath the display’s glass surface. “It’s the air gap between the back of that glass and a mirror membrane at the bottom of the modulator that sets the color,” says Chui. Each modulator’s mirror membrane can snap upward against the glass when a small voltage is applied, closing the cavity and displaying a black color to the viewer. Mirasol modulators are made using techniques similar to those used to pattern metals and deposit materials in computer chip manufacturing.

Modulators come in three types: for red, green, and blue. Each pixel in a Mirasol display is actually made up of several modulators that display the three basic colors at different brightness levels. Switching these modulators on and off in the right combination offers full color at different brightness. In dark conditions, light is directed onto the panel’s modulators from LED lights at the edge of the panel.

So, now you know!

Apparently Qualcomm are busy building a large new factory in Taiwan to manufacture these screens, which they hope will be up and running by about June in 2012. So perhaps this time it may actually happen, and by the end of next year we may find ourselves being offered Sony ereaders or Kindles with full vibrant colour… good to read on a beach with a battery endurance that works for long plane flights…..  We shall see.

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