One of the many tech­nolo­gies on dis­plays at this year’s TOC was Qualcomm’s new Mirosal dis­play tech­nol­ogy. This and Pixel QI’s tech will prob­a­bly kill the eInk reader. Both tech­nolo­gies are low pow­ered, “quick” refresh­ing (though not as quick as a tra­di­tional LCD, color dis­plays. While they do con­sume more power than eInk, my under­stand­ing is that they are far lower draw than a tra­di­tional LCD. That means that the bat­tery on an eReader (or tablet) pow­ered by this tech­nol­ogy should be able to eas­ily last between rou­tine charges. Note that all of the smaller dis­plays in the back­ground are demo­ing Mirosal as well.

Qual­comm Mira­sol Color Dis­play from Matt Bernius on Vimeo.

A cou­ple points of clar­i­fi­ca­tion. The hand­held unit run­ning the video-​loop is not an eReader. Nor is Qualcomm/​Mirasol get­ting into the eReader busi­ness. They are, at this point, just pro­vid­ing the dis­plays. The Qual­comm rep con­firmed that we would see Mira­sol on an eReader by years end, but could not con­firm the manufacturer/​marketer. My guess, based on Qualcomm’s pre­vi­ous rela­tions and the desire to make a big splash with this tech­nol­ogy, is that it will either be a Sony or Kin­dle reader. I don’t think there are other play­ers big enough out there to com­pete with those two for the technology.

As far as it’s com­peti­tor, Pix­elQi… we will see that pre­mier on Notion’s Ink Adam tablet (pic­tured above) later this year. The Ink Adam is a really inter­est­ing device that has the poten­tial to give the iPad a real run for its money in terms of feature/​price set (see com­par­i­son chart below — click for higher res­o­lu­tion version).

(BTW, you get my nar­ra­tion in the video because I was not able to synch up with the offi­cial Qual­comm rep, and the nice fel­low work­ing the booth isn’t allowed to be interviewed)