Just announced at Basel is an interesting advance from Seiko: a bitmapped grey-scale E-ink display with 80,000 pixels and 300 dots per inch, comparable to a good laser printer. Claimed to be a real product and not just a concept, it has amazing promise for programmable, legible displays. Photo-accurate moonphase? Graphics of twilight? We've liked the E-ink watches we've seen so far, so this is tremendously interesting, and we'll be looking for a release date and price.

Also of note is the fact that each pixel can display four levels of grey — that's new on watches, though the Kindle and its ilk have had it for a while.

Without giving numbers, Seiko claims it uses 1% of the power previously required, so hopefully the battery life will be at least a year. I'm not fond of watches I have to recharge every week.

By Paul Hubbard

Thanks to the generosity of Phosphor, we have another watch to give away to one of our readers. Pictured here is the Ana-Digital E-ink (review link), which can be yours this week!

Hit the link for the review so you can see all of the high-tech coolness that could be yours. Analog-digital, with an innovative electronic ink display and versatile steel case and bracelet.

Please read on for details and rules!

As mentioned in the previous Phosphor review, we also received two of their newest curved e-ink models: the P-0302 and P-0201. (The picture to the right is the 0201.) With these watches, Phosphor has embraced the capabilities that differentiate e-ink from previous technology, creating curved displays previously impossible. While they differ slightly in function and even more in style, the two are quite similar in many ways, and the choice between them is mostly one of size and style.

Specs in common between the two:

• 38mm wide by 8mm thick case.
• Waterproof to 50m (160ft).
• Stainless steel case, mineral crystal.
• Both are available with rubber, leather, or bracelets.
• User-replaceable CR2032 batteries.
• Toggle-able white-on-black and black-on-white display in all modes.

One of the exciting developments in the past few years has been the introduction of a new kind of display called "electronic ink" or "e-ink." Unlike LCD displays in many ways, it looks more like paper and opens up some interesting avenues for new watch designs. Today's review is of the Phosphor Ana-Digi, an analog-digital watch with an e-ink display. Specifications include:

• 45mm by 13mm, about 190g.
• 3-hand analog movement, unsynchronized with the digital, set via the signed crown.
• Lumed hour and minute hands.
• Multi-mode digital display - white/black or black/white, with selectable displays of hour markers, date and time.
• Waterproof to 50m (150').
• Stainless steel case and band, domed mineral crystal. Bracelet is 24mm, non-tapering, center section polished with pushbutton release and fliplock.

Read on for the full review.

View the Phosphor E Ink Watch Photo Gallery.

Less then a month ago, I had never even seen electronic ink before. Now I'm reading books and newspapers daily on my Amazon Kindle, and telling time on the new Phosphor E Ink watch. And I hope in another month, I have even more toys powered by E Ink technology.

Electronic ink is a high-contrast, low-power display technology. It is to ink what email is to mail: fast, dynamic, practical, yet still comfortably familiar. However unlike email — which aside from the general concept, is almost nothing like traditional mail — electronic ink is actually a form of ink. Rather than a liquid dye which soaks into paper, E Ink is composed of microcapsules which are about the diameter of a human hair. Each microcapsule contains both light colored positively charged particles and dark colored negatively charged particles suspended in fluid. Electric fields are applied to the microcapsules to cause the particles inside them to polarize: some move to the top where they can be seen, and some move to the bottom where they are hidden. The result is a high contrast monochrome display that can be viewed in most lighting conditions (including direct sunlight), from any angle, and which can retain its image without having to consume power.

eBooks are an obvious use for E Ink technology since you can store hundreds of books, magazines, and newspapers on a single device. But once I saw the Phosphor E Ink watch, it was clear that electronic ink has just as bright of a future in watches.

The main advantage of having a watch with an E Ink dial is that you can easily change the look depending on what you're doing, where you're going, or what you're wearing. The Phosphor E Ink watch lets you choose from among three different hour index configurations, three different date and time modes, and either a "positive" mode (black on white), or a negative mode (white on black). Unfortunately, no mode removes the E-Ink branding at the top of the dial — space which could be better used to allow the simultaneous display of the date and the digital time.

Features of the Phosphor E Ink watch include: