Replacing the screen of a Kindle 3G
Unfortunately after my trip to the US there was a small casualty: my Kindle's screen had cracked and only half worked.
As you can see, the top half was more-or-less stuck on the screen saver image, while the bottom half was still functional. And no wonder, there was a huge crack across the back of the epaper layer. But, notice how there is still an image on the screen even when it is completely disconnected from the device? This epaper stuff is very interesting, requiring power only to change the image; the rest of the time the device can actually be turned off and the image remains present on the screen. Compare this with LCDs and other display technologies which require constant power to produce an image, and you can see why epaper is such a favourable technology for ebook readers. Epaper itself is quite an interesting technology, consisting of lots ot little balls of black and white ink, suspended in little bubbles. Each bubble mak...