"By mimicking how a butterfly's wings shimmer, or how a peacock's tail is so iridescent, engineers at Qualcomm came up with mirasol technology. As Qualcomm notes, "Qualcomm's mirasol display technology is based on a reflective technology called IMOD (Interferometric MODulation), with MEMS structures at its core. This MEMS-based innovation is both bistable, meaning it is both extremely low power, and highly reflective, meaning the display itself can be seen even in direct sunlight." Here's a video explaining more and giving a rundown of how it is used in the e-reader. The battery sipping capabilities of the device (the form factor details of which haven't been divulged yet..what you see in the photo above is only a mock up of one design being considered) will exceed that of even the Kindle, which touts a long battery life, thanks to the mirasol technology. Slashdot notes, "As the mirasol team explained... once you start pushing traditional e-ink panel refresh rates, up to the point you can display smooth video, and introduce color, power draw can actual go beyond that of a regular LCD display. A color e-ink video-capable Kindle would last roughly a day using the same battery; meanwhile the same unit with a mirasol panel would last around a week."" - Evan Parker

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... for more background on the tech: "Interferometric modulator display (IMOD)[1] is an electrically switched display composed of miniature Fabry-Perot interferometers (etalons) that are switched on and off with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). An etalon reflects light at a specific wavelength and gives pure, bright colors while consuming no power. An IMOD element is composed of subpixels that are actually individual Fabry-Perot interferometers (etalons), like the scales in butterfly wings. An etalon consists of two mirrors, one opaque and one half-silvered, with an air gap of an exact distance between them. This distance determines the wavelength that the etalon amplifies by constructive interference. As the light is "selected" from incoming light, the display is actually brighter in bright sunlight. In contrast, a back-lit LCD display suffers from incoming light. The etalon is switched off by bringing the mirrors very close together, pushing the reflected wavelength into the invisible ultraviolet range. A microelectromechanical device moves the lower, opaque mirror to achieve this. For a practical RGB display, a single RGB pixel is built from several subpixels, because the brightness of a monochromic pixel is not adjusted. A monochromatic array of subpixels represents different brightness levels for each color, and for each pixel, there are three such arrays: red, green and blue." - Evan Parker