By Andrew Liszewski
According to their press release, Seiko was the first company to introduce a watch with a low-power e-ink display way back in 2005. But the display on that original model only had a few hundred “pre-positioned segments” which resulted in a screen that worked and looked a lot like traditional LCD-based segmented displays. But the company’s ‘Future Now’ project has developed a way to fit the active matrix EPD, or Electrophoretic Display, technology used in today’s ebook readers into something as small as a watch, giving you a display with 80,000 pixels that are each capable of displaying 4 shades of gray. That equates to a resolution of about 300 dpi and the ability to do a certain level of anti-aliasing. So like an ebook reader, it should be able to display just about anything, but Seiko’s new technology actually uses just 1/100 the power of current e-ink technologies.
Thankfully the watch pictured here is just a prototype designed to demonstrate the new technology, and a “modified version” will be available for sale sometime in the Fall of this year, though specific availability and pricing information has yet to be announced.
[ PR – SEIKO’s ‘Future Now’ project delivers a new generation E-Ink watch. The world’s first EPD watch with an active matrix system. ] VIA [ The Gadgeteer ]
