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How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

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Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#91

Post by dredmorbius »

seneca wrote: post #40
ineedasername wrote: post #38

The article misses a significant device: Onyx Nova 3. The major difference between its prior color offering (poke 2) is the integration of a Wacom layer that makes this very good for note taking. The other hardware and software improvements appear to be incremental. Of particular note with all Onyx readers is that they run Android, opening up the ecosystem of the Play store and particularly your note-taking app of ch…

It's worth noting that Onyx violates the Linux kernel license, and has a ton of telemetry that phones home to China. Major down sides for otherwise interesting tech.

Citation requested.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#92

Post by Tagbert »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #12
theshrike79 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have slowly become accustomed to high refresh rate displays. So that's a big no on e-ink displays unless they manage get them to 60Hz+ somehow

The devices I've seen with color e-ink need to intermittently flash the screen. I could live with a slow refresh rate, but having my screen flicker black once or twice a minute is a deal-breaker.

There is no ongoing flicker on e-ink displays.

The display is absolutely stable with no flicker while you’re reading as there is no refresh. If you trigger a page change the page redraws the new image in a fraction of a second. It looks a bit like a fast cross-fade. If you are updating smaller regions of the screen it is fast enough not to notice. Scrolling would still be a problem as that requires a much faster refresh rate. Such fast refresh would eliminate one of the major benefits of e-ink which is the low power. If you were to refresh e-ink at 30-60Hz it would likely use as much or more power than an LCD.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#93

Post by gnicholas »

Did these ACeP readers [1] ever materialize? It sounded like they were a big step forward from existing devices in terms of fidelity and page turn speed.

I think I recall reading that they were delayed into 2022, but I haven't heard anything about them recently.

1: https://goodereader.com/blog/e-paper/e-ink-plans-on-adding-a...

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#94

Post by Sunspark »

christkv wrote: post #22
empalms wrote: post #20

Every time an E Ink article is posted the patent defeatism is inevitable. I’m curious if there are other techniques to implement reflective(?) displays being explored that wouldn’t fall within the scope of E Ink’s defensible moat, or, if their parents are simply so broad as to stifle most hopes of accessible solutions and broader consumer/professional adoption. Frankly, I’m quite sick of straining my eyes and circadi…

The one laptop per child had one but never went anywhere

It had a transflective LCD.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#95

Post by jrockway »

Retric wrote: post #79
hutzlibu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From wikipedia: "As of 2015, the IMOD Mirasol display laboratory in Longtan, Taiwan, formerly run by Qualcomm, is now apparently run by Apple." So even if something comes out of it - it would be probably just locked into apples garden.

That’s just Apple reusing the physical factory not the tech. Qualcomm completely abandoned the technology and couldn’t find anyone to license it.

I guess they didn't look hard enough. I would have bought the tech for $1.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#96

Post by bhauer »

amelius wrote: post #24

The colors in the opening image look faded.

I wish they had not used vintage magazine covers for their illustration. By using old covers, I wasn't sure how much of the drabness was caused by the device and how much was attributable to the original image being drab.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#97

Post by tyre »

solarkraft wrote: post #46
ineedasername wrote: post #38

The article misses a significant device: Onyx Nova 3. The major difference between its prior color offering (poke 2) is the integration of a Wacom layer that makes this very good for note taking. The other hardware and software improvements appear to be incremental. Of particular note with all Onyx readers is that they run Android, opening up the ecosystem of the Play store and particularly your note-taking app of ch…

I have a Boox Nova 2 and can mostly recommend it. It's true that Onyx violates the GPL and has some privacy concerns around it, but on the upside the bootloader is unlocked by default and you can root the system fairly easily, allowing you to install a firewall restricting some of the phoning home ( https://blog.tho.ms/hacks/2021/03/27/hacking-onyx-boox-note-... ). I'm beginning to use it as a general purpose Android…

What are you reading on it? I'm considering getting something for reading technical books. Do you think this would fit?

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#98

Post by dredmorbius »

jagger27 wrote: post #29

For most reading and writing tasks I think I’d rather have a a monochrome display with much higher DPI with extremely crisp high contrast edges. I hope that keeps improving too. Colour is something I’m willing to go without for this type of device. Maybe a single highlight colour would be nice to have as long as the red or yellow pigment occupies the same cell as black, not an adjacent one. A 600 dpi A4 sized tablet…

Most devices now are in the 200--300 dpi range, monochrome.

That's already as good as a mid-grade laserprinter output, and for text is pretty much entirely sufficient, especially in monochrome.

Other issues still remain: some ghosting (at higher refresh / lower quality), limited greyscale (4--16 shades in most cases), and generally far lower refresh rates than emissive displays (1--8 Hz seems fairly typical). Yes, you can watch monochrome video, if you want. It's in the "sufficient for a general overview", but not high quality.

The place this shows up most especially isn't in video, per se, but on web pages with animations, whether of icons, graphics/charts, or embedded videos. The result is exceedingly distracting at high display quality settings, with a slow, flashing refresh behaviour.

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#99

Post by [deleted] »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #17
saxonww wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink... Monochrome. It has "turbo refresh tech" but unclear what that really means; with e-readers, similar verbiage just means it's less bad. The resolution and pixel density is very nice. The prices would have to come down by at least a factor of 3 though, IMO. I'd take the under.

E-inks screens don't have to be monochrome. I have one with black, white, and yellow. The hard part is fitting a range of color pigments in the pixel units, so the first e-inks so far have had 2-3. At only three colors, black, white, and one shade makes most sense for information contrast. But nothing says it can't be red, green, and blue... and as the technology miniaturizes, we can fit three in the space of one, ma…

[deleted]

Re: How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

#100

Post by Sunspark »

fallat wrote: post #49
yeetaccount4 wrote: post #18

Has there been any progress on extending e ink lifespan?

What's the current lifespan? My original Kindle is still working just fine.

Don't you find the low-resolution and the low-contrast of the first generation panels annoying?
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