Plastic Logic Shows Off Color E-Paper Smartwatch Concept

Plastic Logic showed off its ZED (zero-energy display) earlier this year, a flexible display that requires almost no energy and can be powered entirely from solar panels, making it ideal for many situations. Now the flexible display company is back, this time showing off a concept color e-paper smartwatch that could one day be part of our wearable-gadgets future.

This prototype smartwatch utilizes a flexible e-paper color display that wraps around the wrist and uses e-ink in combination with a color filter to produce the colors. The concept watch is incredibly thin at only 900μm, although that thickness could go up if a touch panel was imbedded in the watch, which would be likely if it ends up in mass production.

As with other smartwatches, the Plastic Logic watch demonstrates a variety of different features the watch could end up offering, such as a heart-rate monitoring ability, information displays from a connected smartphone, such as message notifications and call alerts, and more. One big potential feature that makes it stand out from some other smartwatches is its durable nature.

Jim Watts, an engineer with Plastic Logic, called the display in the smartwatch "effectively unbreakable," with the device said to be durable enough to handle the pounding daily use would give it. Of course, while the prototype is appealing, the practical application of the display in a smartwatch would result in a larger device once a battery and backlight, among other hardware elements, were implemented.

[via Pocket Lint]