What’s one thing the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook can’t do? FLEX! Oh wait, there’s another thing they can’t do – a touchscreen e-ink display. These are two attributes that just might give the Skiff a huge competitive advantage in the e-reader market place.
The Skiff is an e-reader prototype that is not yet on the market, but is expected to be available this year (2010). It is thin, only one quarter of an inch thick – and it bends and flexes due to it’s “silicon thin-film-transistors on a flexible steel substrate”.
And according to thecoolist.com, the Skiff is going to do nothing but dominate the e-reader marketplace once it hits the streets. Here’s more from thecoolist.com:
The Skiff Reader pushes the e-reader standard by featuring a full touchscreen display spanning 11.5-inches. The Amazon Kindle DX and smaller Kindle models don’t feature touchscreen e-ink, neither does that Barnes and Noble Nook (while the latter has an LCD touchscreen below the e-ink portion). This provides a new, finger-friendly world of navigation as you flip pages, highlight and select content modules and skim through your favorite ebooks.
The “silicon thin-film-transistors” technology is a bit more esoteric. In short, the technology used in the Skiff Reader makes it flexible– meaning it can bend and warp on a whim, giving it a more durable and rugged build in contrast to those crackable Kindles. The Skiff uses a metal foil design that merges with the thin film transistors to fit into a low-profile shape, in this case just a quarter-inch in thickness.
