More and better e-ink, please. It's just the best at the things it's good at. Give me a foldable phone with one e-ink screen!
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2024
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"E Ink" is a company, producing displays with a very specific proprietary technology. I think you mean to say more "e-paper", which is a generic term for "paper-like" displays. And unfortunately, right now the only real competition is RLCD (reflective LCD), which is arguably not paper-like enough to qualify. Yes, it's reflective, but other than that, it's just a higher density Game Boy screen. Which is great and all, but it can't compete with E Ink in a lot of aspects. It doesn't have retention, you gotta power the screen, so no signage and stuff. It has LCD-grade bad viewing angles.
RLCDs are cool for certain uses though. For example, I sometimes choose to play on my AGS-001 over my Analogue Pocket if I'm outside in bright daylight.
It will be so cool when that patent expires
I wish they made more e-ink watches
I'd love a successor to Pebble which doesn't require an account. There are a number of options, but my issue is that most require creating an account with vendor, and app integration with - no doubt - copiuos data harvesting and reselling. Many are absurdly expensive.
There are several cheap options on Alibaba.
Goodreader.com lists a number of expensive e-ink watches, some of which look quite nice.
But I've got my eye on Watchy (github, old review); it was introduced a couple of years ago and is still being updated. It's also available from a couple of vendors, including preassembled through Amazon.
my eye on Watchy
Have one after the Pebble, let me know if you have questions.
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I had an Amazfit BIP for a while that had a color e-paper display with a battery that lasted over 30 days. I think they have since gone OLED but one cool thing about it was, while they had their own app with a login, I could alternatively sync it directly with a third party app on Android that was called "Notify And Fitness". I only mention it because within this particular app the info never left the device. Perhaps there is something similar today, but I have since just given in and gone Garmin.
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Which one do you prefer?
And don't say Pebble, that's an e-paper (sharp memoryLCD), not an eink. I personally haven't really encountered any actual eink watches that would seem any good.
I know E Ink is a company, but for most of us it's become a de-facto term referring to the technology, like kleenex, or q-tips.
I have every Pebble model, and used them until the last one's battery finally gave out. I've been using various e-ink (e-paper) readers, from the first Sony to my current Kobo & reMarkable (one for leisure reading, t'other for PDFs and writing). Are those displays different technologies than E Ink's? Does the display process E Ink uses differ from other e-paper technologies? Are they not all based on polarized, bi-colored balls?
I have nothing against pedantry, but I also think E Ink has lost (or won, depending on how you look at it) the identity game; I suspect the majority of people - if surveyed - would neither realize E Ink is a specific company, nor that the correct generic term is "e-paper." Everyone I know (with whom the topic comes up) just call it "e-ink," whether or not it comes from that company. Similarly, I've never heard anyone call it "e-paper" IRL.
P.S. I just did a search for "e-paper watches", and most results call them "e-ink." Maybe they all use E Ink-brand displays, but I can't really tell since none seem to capitalize or (tm) the term. There's a bunch of cheap watches on Alibaba which are called "e-ink" watches - are those all really using E Ink brand displays?
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The Fossil hybrid watches are pretty awesome. Very sad they are now discontinued.
I had one of those! So cool, loved not having a giant glowing thing on my wrist but still receiving notifications.
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No foldable but screens on both side.
Seen a noname Aliexpress phone with a normal display on one side and an e-ink one on the other.
Now make that an option on a flagship device (preferably a non-chinese manufacturer) and I would definitely look into it.
If I remember correctly there was also a flagship producer that produced such a phone as a sort of prototype some time ago, no?
The only one I can think of is Yotaphone.
The phone might look like the thing I remember. But my god does it look like the old 2010s devices :D
Because it indeed is from the early 2010s)
I meant the design itself screams 2010s like it did with Frutinger design in the 2000s
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and generally aren’t very useful for high-motion graphics like videos or games.
I do like the fact that my e-reader is just for reading books without distractions. Thats also kinda the point of e-ink, to be as close to paper as possible and make digital reading better. I don't see the need yet for a paper like screen to animate video because it won't be as good as a normal screen. I'll prefer specialized screens over a catch-all type any day.
I mostly agree, but it would be nice if it was a bit faster to be able to use it for web browsing. I still like reading long form articles and such but navigating and scrolling isn't very viable yet on e-readers.
EinkBro lets you treat sites (or the reader mode) like pages and turn them accordingly. My boox go color 7 also has page turn buttons, and allows you to configure them to scroll x distance on a per app basis, which works like a page turn on apps that only allow scrolling. It makes reading articles with omnivore work pretty well. Example And switching to speed mode
I'm not sure if you can easily make the same tweaks on the other Boox devices or using volume buttons on other Android devices or whatever, but there are ways around it.
I definitely do agree with you that the capability of faster refresh would be nice to have, but right now isn't bad.
This article has completely missed a selling point of e-readers for people like myself: no constant refreshing.
My eye strain, when reading for a long time, doesn't come from the light (or lack thereof), which is evident as a positive of backlit Kindles and other e-readers, though the constant flicker of screens. E-ink solves this issue perfectly, and with every device in that article mentioning "60Hz" on their alternatives I feel as though they've missed a big point of having an e-reader and what exactly constitutes as "paper like" (it's a lot more than just "low/no backlight").
Another point (which is a result of not refreshing the screen) which the article misses is power consumption. I can use my reader for several weeks without recharging.
Yeah, there's a reason people prefer Kindle e-ink type e-readers to just using a tablet like a Kindle Fire, even if the latter can do more stuff
backlit Kindles
As I understand it, Kindles aren’t backlit but rather frontlit (or sidelit) with a layer designed to diffuse the light across the page evenly. The claim is that the lack of direct lighting helps in the fight against eye strain as well.
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It would be neat to compare these new reflective LCDs with the 25-year-old ones used in the Game Boy Color.
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Reflective LCD, like my palm pilot used? I didn't think we would see those make a comeback.
It is almost as if there has been about 2 decades of technological development since you last used that kind of tech.
The article is a bit vague on the pros and cons of reflective LCD screens.
It seems to be pros that it has a good refresh rate, can be used without a backlight so is good outdoors and indoors in a bright room, and maybe better for your eyes due to the lack of the backlight/blue spectrum light. It also may offer better colour depth than e-ink currently.
The cons are not clearly addressed but presumably battery life is worse than e-ink but better than a backlit display such as OLED or AMOLED, that colours are still not as good as other LCDs even if better than e-ink, and it seems cost (although that may be due to the small market at present).
Also there is no obvious innovation noted in the article so its not clear what has changed about these displays? It sounds more like some small companies are just using the displays in a new way to try and mimick paper. But maybe thats wrong or will change?
Maybe this would compete with e-ink if cost comes down. The battery benefit of e-ink with a static image is one of its big benefits, to the point that its being used for shelf labels in supermarkets. E-ink isn't going anywhere but good to have more choices in the tablet space.
Backlit OLED? You may be thinking of ~~QLER~~ QLED because OLED is self emissive
I think what he means is emissive in general. OLED, LCD, whatever, all are powering through ambient light, so need really high brightness in high lighting scenarios.
E-ink and these rLCD screens use the ambient light to their advantage, so they're almost always lit at the appropriate level automatically, and you can supplement with much less fatiguing front-lighting in low light scenarios so you don't have the emission from the display shining in your face.
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"Runs a custom version of Android". God fucking shitnuggets. I just want computing to be mine again.
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Welcome news, with the caveats others have highlighted. E-ink is still quite expensive for reasons I dont understand. Someone said there were only a couple of manufacturers.
Cheap (and by that I mean rubbish) 10” tablets are available for under £30 in china, but if you want e-ink it’s at least double .
The secret lies in patents and Monopoly.
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I'm perfectly happy with the progress of e-ink in motion It's not good, but it's enough to follow the occasional animation in a mostly static environment.
Color isn't bad either.
(Both do need either the front light cranked or a lot of ambient light to get that vibrance. They kind of fade a little in lower light without the front light)
I don't hate the idea of better progress in rLCD. I'd be pretty interested in a steam-deck-like that worked well outside in harsh sunlight. But I have a hard time seeing it match eink in contrast for static content. E-ink has a lot less ground to cover to get to "flawless".
What devices are these, in the video and photos?
That's the Boox go color 7.
The video is in the fastest mode. The comics are in the slowest, regal mode. You're going to have to manually tweak different apps with different content for the best results. But I really like what the color adds.
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So, like the screen in the PlayDate?
Especially excited bout the medium screen sizes. I like my small eReader but sometimes need something larger for PDFs and to make highlighting and searching easier in non-fiction books. The giant tablet I am typing this on is nice for web and video, but it’s just too massive for reading and it appears tablets have the seem problem as smartphones with becoming ever bigger.
Mine is about 20cm in diagonal, and I find this size perfect. Most of my textbooks are only available as PDF/DJVU, often as scans. And those that do have a text version often end up with messed-up formatting or a lot of recognition errors that make reading annoying, so even then I usually opt for a "raw" scan, despite lesser convenience.
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