But there we were with an eReader screen you could actually bend. Flexible screens are something from the world of tech blog press leaks, and you may have heard of folding smartphones and screens you can roll up and put in your pocket. A lot of work had to be done to make sure that it would look perfect for our demanding eReading fans, but when it was all done, we came out with something remarkable. Mobius removes the glass from eInk and replaces it with two sheets of plastic polymer. They had a prototype screen, called Mobius, that no one had ever taken a chance on before. We went back to our manufacturing partners and tried a new idea – removing glass from the eInk screen entirely. Months into the process, we threw that design away. We went through one entire design cycle creating an ultra-thin device with a glass screen and it just wasn’t working. Bigger screens mean more glass, more glass is more fragile, and then it has to be protected by a more reinforced case with bulkier plastic or heavier, colder metal cases that don’t feel as good to hold. The plastic case is there, more than anything else, to protect that glass and keep it from cracking. eInk screens are traditionally sandwiched between two pieces of glass – one in front and one behind. “We want a bigger screen and we want the whole thing to be even lighter.” Those two qualities usually don’t go together. But the other was a bit more of a head-scratcher. One was “Keep doing what you’re doing – we love the waterproofing, the ComfortLight, public library access, eInk. Two themes kept showing up when we talked to customers. But it starts with our perennial question: how can we improve on the paper book? This is a story that ends with an eReader plummeting two stories onto a concrete floor. In which our hero learns the value of flexibility in a hard, unyielding world.
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