E Ink — the company that makes the e-paper displays you see in e-readers, and the leader in electronic ink technology — recently announced a breakthrough technology, Advanced Color ePaper (ACeP). This reflective display can produce all colors in every pixel, which effectively means a much wider range of color in reflective displays.

As TechCrunch notes, none of the technologies in this space that have emerged thus far have been adequate: “Color e-readers always seemed washed out — not good when your competition is glossy magazines and kids’ books.”

ACeP can reproduce 32,000 colors, the result of a major engineering challenge. What you see is better contrast, resolution, and display quality.

Unfortunately, E Ink has only been able to achieve displays that are 20 inches diagonally. and as Slashgear notes, “These panels are 1600 pixels by 2500 pixels each — that's 150 PPI in all. They each utilize just one single backplane, making the entire execution as simple as possible.” Looking at the images at Slashgear, you can see the panels are less than brilliant.

150 PPI means the new technology will hardly be good enough for an e-reader, but it’ll be a pretty cool development for in-store signage. Still, with the tech out there, we just need to wait a bit. This kind of thing evolves fast.

Tags : e-ink-reader, e-Book Reader