The other monitor milestone - New E-reader with colored E-ink

[DeScruff]

1 minute ago, RainingTacco said:

Pros of eink screen vs modern smartphone amoled/ips screen with high ppi[like retina level -300 ppi]? 

Its two completely different technologies with completely different goals.
E-ink will never replace LCDs in your phone or anything like that, its not meant to, its a very niche display technology thats use cases are limited. But where it is useful, it excels.

Anyways Pros:

• The display can be "On" and not drain power (This is why the Kindle 4 apparently has a 1 month battery life, despite it only having a ~900 mAh battery)
• Perfect sun visibility.
• Perfect viewing angles.
• No eye strain from looking at a light emitting screen

Cons: - Everything else

• More expensive then LCD (Which is why they aren't used in digital watches)
• slow response times. Like if you thought old 80s LCDs were blurry in motion, E-ink is worse.
• Potential for "Ghost" images - Or something akin to "Dead Pixels" - This is why the display "Inverts" every so often.
• If I recall... they are like Nand Flash cells in that they have a lifespan and can only "flip" so many times before it starts losing contrast and wearing down. Video would kinda like defragging an SSD.
• Resolution is low, - but it does have a natural "blur" to it so a 90dpi display doesn't look as pixel bocky as an LCD. (Looking more like... printed paper)

Thats just scratching the surface. As I said. its a very Niche display technology, but if you are in that niche, it excels.
I should note: A common misconception is that the Pebble used E-ink. It didn't. It used Sharp's "Memory LCD". A fairly basic Smartwatch could probably be a good usecase for E-ink, specially a color one. But you'd need to sacrifice the flashy graphics and animations on it.

[Kilrah]

8 hours ago, RainingTacco said:

Pros of eink screen vs modern smartphone amoled/ips screen with high ppi[like retina level -300 ppi]? 

Just that some people prefer the paper-like appearance.

[WereCat]

22 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

With the kind of lag they showcase in the video, I highly doubt it!

Yeah, I agree that they showcased this on examples that are not really a good fit for e-ink but towards the end when they were drawing, I can imagine this being an excellent drawing tablet.

I would definitely buy something like that if it was available for a reasonable price.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

Yeah, I agree that they showcased this on examples that are not really a good fit for e-ink but towards the end when they were drawing, I can imagine this being an excellent drawing tablet.

I would definitely buy something like that if it was available for a reasonable price.

Depends on drawing style.  The low refresh rate could be a non starter for some.  It would for me.  It depends a lot on how fast one makes a line.  Polling can be a big deal.  If one flicks a quick curve and it only gets polled in 4 places it’s not a curve and not the line you made.

[Kilrah]

Polling is fast, it's just the display that lags a bit. 

And the existing ePaper drawing tablets do well enough already, so shouldn't be an issue.

[LeSheen]

On 12/27/2019 at 7:14 PM, Radium_Angel said:

I'm fully aware of that.

I have seen e-ink readers, and that's acceptable for that sort of thing, but the video shows a tablet like device with google maps, play store, etc, where that kind of lag wouldn't be acceptable...

Depends on what the end user finds acceptable. There are already smartphones that use e-ink displays. This is amazing for the battery. If you only use your smartphone like a phone, and once in a while use the smart aspect then this is a trade-off well worth it.

 

Honestly I would probably be better of with such a device. Since I only call,text, read forums, google and listen to music on it.

[kelvinhall05]

5 hours ago, LeSheen said:

Depends on what the end user finds acceptable. There are already smartphones that use e-ink displays. This is amazing for the battery. If you only use your smartphone like a phone, and once in a while use the smart aspect then this is a trade-off well worth it.

 

Honestly I would probably be better of with such a device. Since I only call,text, read forums, google and listen to music on it.

If you only use your smartphone as a phone save yourself hundreds of dollars and get a dumbphone.

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

If you only use your smartphone as a phone save yourself hundreds of dollars and get a dumbphone.

I’ve seen this done.  There’s a couple ways.  A dumb phone and an iPod touch is one.  An iPad is another.  If one is clever it’s possible to do an iPod touch and no phone at all.  Has limitations though.

[LeSheen]

15 hours ago, kelvinhall05 said:

If you only use your smartphone as a phone save yourself hundreds of dollars and get a dumbphone.

Reread my reaction, I clearly use it then more then a phone. I just don't watch video content or play games that much. But still use it for spotify, mail or my banking app for example.

[Wyzzy Moon]

On 12/27/2019 at 7:54 PM, TheUberMedic said:

Ooooo interesting, would be cool to see this in a smart watch.

 

On 12/27/2019 at 3:13 PM, williamcll said:

Odd, I guess they've never really sold the product at all?

*looks at the pebble time steel around my wrist*
Don't we already have this tech in a product? What's new?

[Kilrah]

Pebble doesn't have e-paper, it's a special low power LCD.

[Unixsystem]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:09 AM, LeSheen said:

Depends on what the end user finds acceptable. There are already smartphones that use e-ink displays. This is amazing for the battery. If you only use your smartphone like a phone, and once in a while use the smart aspect then this is a trade-off well worth it.

 

Honestly I would probably be better of with such a device. Since I only call,text, read forums, google and listen to music on it.

Keep in mind that even scrolling down on a web page would be a slow and laggy experience. If the browser worked using page down instead of a smooth scroll then it might work, but even then most web pages have so much negative space that you would be flipping "pages" constantly. 

 

The reason it works well for books is because you can format raw text to whatever size screen you have to minimize page flips. On a forum like this where you have avatars and signatures and sidebars, you'd likely only get half a dozen posts on screen at a time even on a decent sized tablet. 

[LeSheen]

On 1/4/2020 at 1:12 AM, Waffles13 said:

Keep in mind that even scrolling down on a web page would be a slow and laggy experience. If the browser worked using page down instead of a smooth scroll then it might work, but even then most web pages have so much negative space that you would be flipping "pages" constantly. 

 

The reason it works well for books is because you can format raw text to whatever size screen you have to minimize page flips. On a forum like this where you have avatars and signatures and sidebars, you'd likely only get half a dozen posts on screen at a time even on a decent sized tablet. 

I never tried a phone like it, but the more I think about it the more I want to give it a shot.

I'm an IT-professional, so I'm carrying a laptop most of the time anyway. I don't browse that much on my phone because why would I if I have a computer with me? Might even be a big benefit for me since I won't waste as much time on social media then. Should still be good enough to chat, but horrible to scroll social feeds.

 

Could be a nice experiment for this new year.

EDIT: Sadly there don't seem to be any interesting phones.