There will always be paper books for die-hard romantics like my friend Jimmy, who actually smells a volume before he reads it and then, when done, can sit for hours in almost-darkness, stroking his calloused poet’s fingers across the smooth wood-pulp and dreaming of the good-old days of cotton paper and cow-skin covers.
But for more normal people, the technology that we use to read books in the near future will be based on silicon, not cellulose, and the e-book market is heating up. One of the big benefits of e-paper is that it sips electricity allowing devices to work for days rather than hours. LG’s foray into the e-book world extends this with a solar panel, helpfully placed on the front inside cover of the reader itself, and at just ten grams and less than a millimeter thick, it will be almost unnoticeable.
If exposed to the sun for five hours, the TFT solar panel will give enough charge for a day of use. LG plans to up the efficiency and we can see a time when e-books will never need to be charged. Remember the first solar-powered calculators? They were a novelty which is now ubiquitous. And e-books are especially well suited to solar power, as they need to be read in a bright place and few of us want to recharge our books.
When, or even if, this prototype will go on sale is unknown. But it doesn’t matter. Somebody, somewhere, will make one soon enough.
Solar Cell e-Book from LG Display [OLED Display]
See Also:
- Kindle Goes International — With a Little Help From AT&T
- World's First Color E-Book Reader Goes on Sale
- Sony's E-Book Reader Adds Touchscreen, Wireless Downloads
- Buying Guide: How to Choose an E-Book Reader
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