EE Times Under the Hood - June 23, 2008 - (Page U46)

UTH0623COMP_pg42_55.qxd 6/11/08 4:32 PM Page 46 under the hood: w w w. e e t i m e s . c o m C OMPUT ERS & GAM I NG • w w w. t e c h o n l i n e . c o m E-book is a sight for sore eyes lectronic readers, or e-books, emerged in full force a few years ago, but never really had a major impact on the market. The biggest complaint was that looking at the display for long periods was hard on the eyes. The user interface wasn’t the greatest, either. BY RICHARD NASS E VIDEO For more insight, view the related TeardownTV episode at: cmptv.net/teardown/SonyeBook Sony thinks it has solved those problems, with the help of a key supplier, E Ink. Sony’s Portable Reader System (PRS) 500, which recently dropped to a price point of less than $300, is about a half-inch thick, roughly the size of a paperback (about 7 x 5 inches), and weighs just 9 ounces. The readable display area measures 6 inches on the diagonal, which is about the same as one page in the latest James Patterson novel. Thanks to the E Ink technology, called Vizplex, the high-contrast (four-level gray scale), high-resolution (170 pixels/inch) display can be read in bright sunlight. It offers a near-180° viewing angle. The Vizplex imaging film is designed for high performance, with black-and-white electronic-ink pigment formulations. It’s brighter and offers a faster response time than the previous-generation active-matrix (AM) imaging film. In addition, it can be manufactured in larger sizes, up to 9.7 inches. To create the imaging film, a microencapsulated electronic ink is applied onto a plastic substrate that has been coated with indium tin oxide in a roll-to-roll process. The resulting ink film is combined with a thin adhesive and a plastic release sheet to form the Vizplex imaging film. The film is then converted into individual sheets and packaged for shipment to the thin-film-transistor (TFT) display manufacturer. With Vizplex, E Ink leverages the existing infrastructure used in the manufacture of conventional AM LCDs, but the E Ink process flow for display cell assembly is actually simpler. The process used to attach the Vizplex imaging film to the TFT panel is similar to polarizer lamination for AM LCDs and uses similar equipment. Other steps, such as the scribe-andbreak process, are identical to processes for AM LCDs. Sony’s PRS-500 e-book is designed with 64 Mbytes of internal memory, which the company claims is enough to store about 80 books. If that’s not ample, there’s a slot for a Memory Stick or an SD memory card. Battery life was a little hard to determine, as I didn’t get a chance to wear down the battery completely. But Sony claims the battery will last for up to 7,500 continuous page turns on one charge. Charge time is about four hours using ac power or six hours through USB. The lithium-ion battery is mounted to the back of the display, an unusual choice and a tribute to the E Ink technology. I would have expected that the heat generated by the battery would distort the informa- The eBook is based on a Freescale DragonBall MX1 processor The ‘joystick’ can be seen in the lower left of the photo 46 Electronic Engineering Times, TechOnline | June 23, 2008 http://www.techonline.com http://www.eetimes.com http://cmptv.net/teardown/SonyeBook

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Under the Hood - June 23, 2008

Under the Hood - June 23, 2008 Extreme Design: SuitSat Pushes Desigers' Limits Evolution of the Smart Phone Mature Devices get Rolly Rocking GPS: Garmin Nuvi 750 vs. HP iPaq 310 Inside the Sony OLED TV Multizone Dgital Audio Flip Ultra Camcorder - An Ode to Clean Design Robot Guitar Tunes Itself E-book is a Sight for Sore Eyes Scientific Calculator Boils Down to Two ICs $100 BOM Eludes First OLPC Laptop 45 nm: What Intel Didn't Tell You Next Step in NAND Flash Evolution Surveillance on a Shoestring Hot 3G Phone Owes Debt to Analog SecurID Fob: Single-Chip Safety Net

Under the Hood - June 23, 2008

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