For those of us here in the States, the name Bridgestone is associated with tires and golf balls, and that’s about it. But the Japanese company actually has invested in developing electronics as well, and is now showing off their new AeroBee e-Paper displays which work differently from most.
Using a material they call “Electronic Liquid Powder” inside their screens, these displays consume very little power, and Bridgestone says they’re almost as sharp as reading actual paper. That said, at a resolution of 800 x 600 for the 13.1″ version, the pixels will actually be quite large – somewhere around 75dpi.
The AeroBee screens can display up to 4096 colors (using filter layers), and offer the ability to instantaneously change state using a stylus input. While a full screen refresh takes 1.3 seconds, but drawing on screen is basically instantaneous. This makes them especially conducive for use for note-taking, schoolwork and sketching.
Bridgestone is currently showing off a 13.1″ diagonal (A4) version of the screen, but is also working on a giant-size 21″ (A3) version as well. The AeroBee is being OEM’d and runs on Linux, so it should be fairly easy for device makers to take advantage of the platform. They also say the screens can be made to be flexible, so maybe someday we’ll finally get that rollable electronic newspaper we’ve been waiting for all these years.
[via DigInfo.TV and Akihabara News]
