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. '
In the meantime, Plastic Logic is demo'g its business model due out in 2010 and a flexible display version. Here's a