Back in April, E Ink announced the development of new color ePaper technology with improved update times, high resolution and stylus support. Now the company has announced that Gallery 3 is going into mass production and will make its way to devices from early next year – and the first to launch is the Bigme Galy tablet.
E Ink Gallery 3 is reported to achieve the full color gamut at each pixel thanks to a four-particle ink system comprising cyan, magenta, yellow and white. Screen update times shape us as 500 ms for fast color mode, between 750 and 1,000 ms for standard color and 1,500 ms at the best color option. Black-and-white update times get boosted to 350 ms.
For pen stylus users, update times of 30 ms can be had for black-and-white scribbling as well as for some colors, resolution has been bumped to 300 pixels-per-inch, and the new ComfortGaze front light is designed to reduce blue light for a more eye-friendly read.
PocketBook, Boox, AOC, iFlyTek, Readmoo and iReader have all confirmed Gallery 3 devices for 2023, but the first to launch is the Bigme Group with a Kickstarter for an 8-inch tablet named Galy.
The 181.45 x 159.29 x 6.95-mm (7.14 x 6.27 x 0.27-in), 320-g (11.2-oz) device offers a screen resolution of 1,920 x 1,440 pixels, runs Android 11, features 2.3-GHz octa-core processing brains supported by 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, plus TF card expansion, and ships with a magnetic smart pen.
Like Bigme's previous color E Ink tablet – the 10.3-inch inkNote Color – the Galy sports a dual camera setup - the 5-MP front camera can be used to snap selfies while users can hover the device above a document to grab an image of a document with the 8-MP rear camera, which the system will then convert into text.
Other notable features include a quad noise-canceling microphone array for voice-to-text transcription, the ability to convert hand-written notes to text, fingerprint unlock, a 3,000-mAh LiPo battery, dual-band Wi-Fi for downloading content (the Galy supports multiple ebook formats), Bluetooth for wireless connection to peripherals, and dual speakers for listening to audiobooks.
Kickstarter pledges for the Bigme Galy currently start at HKD 4,224 (about US$570). The usual crowdfunding cautions apply, but if everything goes to plan, shipping is estimated to start from February 2023.