Is the e-ink screen on e-readers really that fragile?

[arabianights]

i accidently dropped my kindle 4 NT onto the floor last week and the screen is messed up. it seems that the e-ink substrate is broken inside the screen.

i always took my kindle everywhere i go, but this new relevation makes me aware how fragile the e-ink screen truly is, which begs the question: why the industry haven't come up with a more durable screen for e-readers?

 

[jedishrfu]

All electronics are more fragile than the printed word. The best you can do is use a cover to protect it from an accident that you hope never happens.

Time to shop for a new one, I guess. The advantages they have over books is their word lookup and the fact that you can store many books with wifi access to even more than you could ever possibly carry but with that advantage you accept the fragility, the battery issues and the display limitations that it has.

 

[rkolter]

i always took my kindle everywhere i go, but this new relevation makes me aware how fragile the e-ink screen truly is...

I think you are misinterpreting the data. You say you carried it everywhere you went. Did you always wrap it in bubble wrap, carry it carefully in both hands, body-check anyone who might come into contact with your device, etcetera? No. You carried it around. Like a device. And probably banged it more than a few times here or there.

What you are experiencing is a bias. You have forgotten all the times you have banged and bumped your Kindle and not noticed, or did notice but realized your Kindle was just fine. This time, you dropped it and it broke - this is the event that will stand out and that you will remember. What you really have is a whole lot of data points that say "Wow, my Kindle has a very resilient screen" and one data point that says, "Wow, this screen broke when all I did was drop it".

The screens are surprisingly resilient for the insults and injury they take. But they have their limits. Most likely when you dropped it, it hit something or landed at an angle such that the brunt of the impact was taken by a tiny area of the Kindle. In that situation, it doesn't take much force at all to cause damage, and there's not a whole lot manufacturers can do.