A foldable Kindle Colorsoft could be next, after the launch of the "world's first" folding colour reader

In our Kindle Colorsoft review we described Amazon's first colour ebook reader as "a very big first step" into a more colourful world. And now China's Readmoo has launched what could be the next evolutionary shift – the "world's first" folding colour e-reader.

The MooInk V has several advantages over Amazon's colour Kindle, apart from its most obvious unique feature.

Its 8-inch display is based on E-Ink's Gallery 3 technology, and that's a big leap forward in term of colour reproduction. Where the Colorsoft can show 4,096 shades, Gallery 3 is capable of displaying over 50,000.

The resolution is better too. The Kindle Colorsoft can only display at 300ppi in monochrome mode, but the mooInk V can do that in full colour.

Why did a folding e-reader take so long?

You'd have thought a folding e-reader would have arrived years ago, but the tech to do it is tricky. E Ink displays are fairly thick, much more so than the OLEDs used in phones, like the Samsung Galaxy Fold 6.

That makes designing a folding e-reader more difficult than a tablet or handset, and Readmoo says it's been working on this project for nine years.

As with other folding devices, a foldable screen is exposed to stresses and strains that static technologies don't need to worry about. But Readmoo reckons it's solved that problem too.

It says its e-reader has been tested and survived over 200,000 folds. That's the same number of folds that Samsung's folding phones are designed to endure.

We don't yet know when the MooInk V will launch, what countries it'll be available in or what it'll cost. But even if it doesn't reach these shores, the E-ink display it uses will – and if it doesn't arrive in a near-future Kindle device I'll be amazed.