First Android device with Qualcomm’s Mirasol display has weeks of battery life

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Qualcomm has announced the world’s first device to use their new Mirasol display technology in partnership with South Korea’s largest book seller, Kyobo. While at first glance the vividness of the display might not impress, the fact that it provides the new Kyobo color E-reader with weeks of battery life under normal usage is enough to get us interested.

Kyobo’s new Android 2.3-powered e-reader is the first device to utilize the mirasol technology and sports a 5.7” 1024×768 display, 1GHz Snapdragon S2 class processor, and “battery life measured in weeks”. Now, before we get too excited about the incredible battery life provided by the mirasol technology, Kyobo warns battery life estimates are based on 30 minutes of daily reading time, with WiFi off, and the display set to 25% brightness. With those settings, depending on just how many weeks the device actually lasts, many of the e-readers currently on the market, such as the Kindle Touch, are comparable. The new Kyobo e-reader is available now in South Korea for $310 USD.

If you’re unfamiliar with Qualcomm’s mirasol technology, the displays essentially utilize a micro-electro-mechanical system “composed of two conductive plates” which are used to create color from ambient light. The end result is extremely decreased power consumption in comparison to traditional displays, while still providing a bright, always-visible color screen that can handle video and animations. Qualcomm describes it as having “the benefits of the e-reader, coupled with the benefits of the handset, and the disadvantages of neither”. Thankfully, Qualcomm is hard at work on the second generation mirasol technology that might make its way into smartphones sometime in 2012. The video below walks us through exactly how the technology works.

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(via Android and Me)