E Ink and MediaTek partner to bring AI capabilities to next-generation e-readers

You may finally have new reasons to upgrade your e-reader

The new platform also promises better color ePaper displays with smoother refresh rates, richer colors, and support for screens up to 13.3 inches. For years, e-readers have been wonderfully simple devices. They offer long battery life, paper-like displays, and a distraction-free way to get through books. The trade-off, however, is that they've largely remained frozen in time while tablets have become increasingly smarter. That could soon start to change. At Computex 2026, E Ink announced a deeper partnership with MediaTek to bring AI capabilities to future ePaper devices. The two companies are combining E Ink's latest color display technology with MediaTek's new generation of AI-focused chips, setting the stage for e-readers that can do much more than display text. At the center of the announcement are MediaTek's new MT8115 and MT8126 processors, both designed specifically for ePaper products. Unlike traditional e-reader chips, these are equipped with dedicated AI hardware that handles tasks directly on the device. That could mean translating foreign-language content while you read, transcribing lectures or meetings, generating summaries of lengthy documents, or converting voice notes into organized text. For students juggling coursework or professionals buried under PDFs and reports, that's a much bigger leap than simply turning pages faster. Imagine reading through a research paper and instantly generating a concise summary before a meeting. Or using an ePaper notebook to record a lecture and walking away with structured notes. The partnership isn't just about AI, though. MediaTek's platform will also support E Ink's Gallery and Kaleido color display technologies, which could address some of the biggest complaints surrounding color e-readers today. While color ePaper displays have improved dramatically in recent years, they still lag behind traditional screens in refresh rates and responsiveness. The new platform promises smoother screen updates, richer colors, and reduced ghosting, all of which should make reading comics, textbooks, magazines, and illustrated content far more enjoyable. The companies say the technology can support displays as large as 13.3 inches at 300 PPI, opening the door to larger note-taking devices and digital textbooks. The first products built on the platform are expected to come from Linfiny, E Ink's subsidiary. No, this won't suddenly turn e-readers into tablet killers. But it does suggest that a category once defined by doing one thing exceptionally well is finally preparing to do a lot more.

E-readers are getting features they don't need, and it's going to slow them down

I've been covering Android and other mobile technology for close to ten years now, with a specific interest in phone accessories, e-readers, and what makes each individual phone different from another. I delight in looking at the phone market from as many angles as possible, and while my opinions may be odd, at times, they're always from the heart as much as the head. I have a background in the mobile accessories world, which explains my odd enthusiasm for cases and things that clip onto smartphones. I worked for Digital Trends from 2017 to 2025. E Ink, the company that creates the e-ink displays we all know and love, is partnering with MediaTek to bring AI capabilities to future e-readers (via Android Authority). Unlock Personalized Content & Exclusive Features For Free * Engage in discussions in Threads * Follow and Like top authors, topics, and trends * Browse with fewer ads across the site * Personalize your profile to showcase your activity * Get a content feed tailored to your interests By creating an account, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive our newsletters; you can unsubscribe any time. Keep Reading Log In Forgot your password? Create an account Please provide your email address to finish creating your account. Create An Account *Required: 8 chars, 1 capital letter, 1 number Create An Account Continue withGoogle Continue withOpenPass or Continue withEmail Continue By creating an account, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You also agree to receive our newsletters; you can unsubscribe any time. A godsend for certain users Details are sparse at the moment, but we do know MediaTek is developing a pair of processors, the MT8115 and MT8126, specifically for e-ink devices. These chips will contain dedicated AI hardware that processes on-device, rather than requiring a cloud. Again, we're not sure entirely what this will mean for AI on e-ink devices, but we can guess. It's likely it'll handle real-time translations, document summaries, and converting voice notes into text. These sorts of features are likely to be a godsend for anyone who uses an e-ink tablet like the Kindle Scribe or Onyx Boox Go 10.3 for reading PDFs or other documents. But for anyone who sees "e-ink" as a shorthand for "e-reader", this is yet another wasted new feature. Yet more e-reader features nobody uses Your e-reader is likely packed to the gills with stuff you don't need or use, and AI risks becoming another one of those. On Kindles alone there's X-Ray, Story So Far and Recaps, Word Wise, and other features that I'm confident most readers don't use, and likely aren't even aware are there. It's bloat for bloat's sake, and while it's possible such AI features will be limited to the tablet-sized productivity devices they might actually be useful on, we all know it's going to be slung into e-readers purely so the marketing can include the words "AI". In the meantime, more and more of an e-reader's storage is going to be taken up by additional bloat in the operating system and functions that users tend not to want or use. Ultimately, what people want from an e-reader is simple. You want a crisp and clear screen, fast page turning and load times, and the sort of battery life that puts old-style Nokia phones to shame. That's it. Instead, we're about to see AI crammed into e-readers simply because it can be.

Ereaders are only going to get smarter thanks to E Ink's partnership with MediaTek, and it could be a big improvement to color displays -- but AI is unfortunately involved

* E Ink and MediaTek are partnering to improve color display for ereaders * It also wants to add AI-powered tools to ereaders such as translations and document summaries * Though it its good news for color display performance, AI tools defeat the purpose of simplicity with ereaders E Ink and MediaTek have announced that they will be expanding their partnership to make your ereaders even smarter. Showcasing at Computex 2026, E Ink and MediaTek shared that they will be continuing with their collaboration to combine E Ink Gallery and E Ink Kaleido color display technologies with MediaTek's latest chips to improve performance and make AI functions integral to the next generation of the best ereaders. The core aspect of the partnership centers around the development of MediaTek's MT8115 and MT8126 system-on-chips (SoC), which will pack AI-powered applications to carry out on-device tasks. This includes translating languages when reading texts not in your native tongue, multi-speaker voice recognition for capturing meeting transcriptions, and putting voice notes into text form. Additionally, these processors will also allow you to produce concise summaries of long documents. Though AI integration is one of the partnership's main objectives, it's also designed to enhance color display ereaders which, despite having come a long way, can still fall behind on the performance front. As well as supporting ereader displays up to 13.3 inches with 300 PPI high resolution, the partnership promises enhanced color rendering, making it easier for you to read illustrative texts such as magazines, textbooks, comics, and educational resources. Not only will color displays appear brighter and more visually appealing, the E Ink Kaleido technology paired with MediaTek's chips allow for smoother and faster page transitions and refreshes. "Building on our longstanding partnership with MediaTek, we continue to optimize the ePaper display experience," said VP of Business Center at E Ink, JM Hung, in the announcement. MediaTek's VP, Adam King, also added to the announcement; "As generative AI reshapes the industry, we are combining MediaTek's edge AI compute capabilities with E Ink's full-color ePaper displays to evolve the digital reader into a true smart device". As handy as color display improvements sound, the proposed AI integrations could cause an uproar among AI haters who also use ereaders. Though ereaders aren't as advanced as tablets, that's kind of the point. They provide a simple interface with basic reading purposes, and are perfect for escaping AI functions that the majority of everyday devices are rolling out by the minute. Reading as a means of leisure is built entirely on minimal distractions and escapism, so pumping AI tools into this seems counterintuitive and frankly, the last thing that bookworms would want from their reading experience. How long will it be before Amazon jumps on this bandwagon with future generations of Kindles? Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Dumb ebook readers are about to get darn smart for you with useful AI and Android support

This story is part of our coverage of Computex, the world's biggest computing conference. Updated less than 56 seconds ago E Ink and MediaTek have teamed up to bring something genuinely exciting to a product category that has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. Your next e-reader might just transcribe meetings, translate languages in real time, and finally show you colors that don't look washed out. The two companies announced an expanded collaboration built around MediaTek's new generative AI e-reader chips, the MT8115 and MT8126. These support both Linux and Android, and pack a dedicated NPU that delivers up to 7.4 TOPS of AI computing performance. Recommended Videos What all that technical jargon actually means for you is useful stuff like multi-speaker voice recognition, meeting transcription, and real-time translation across more than 20 languages, all processed on the device itself. What does this mean for your reading experience? The display improvements are just as exciting. The new chips use a 7-level high-voltage oxide TFT driving technology that speeds up how ePaper particles move on screen. That means faster page turns, cleaner transitions, less ghosting, and a noticeably smoother experience overall. The chipsets support screens up to 13.3 inches at 300 PPI, which is sharp enough to make text look great. For color, the chips pair with E Ink's Gallery and Kaleido technologies to deliver better color depth and a wider color range. Illustrated books and educational materials are the obvious beneficiaries here, and the improvement should be meaningful compared to what color e-readers have offered so far. To date, the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft has delivered the best colors in my opinion. I cannot wait to see how far this new tech will push the color e-ink displays. When will you get to use this? MediaTek's new chips are expected to debut in next-generation tablets from Linfiny, an E Ink subsidiary. Both companies will also be showing off the technology at Computex 2026 in Taipei later this year, so we should get a clearer picture of real-world performance soon. If the results live up to the promises, e-readers are about to become a lot more capable and a lot harder to ignore.