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How E Ink developed full-color e-paper

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101–110 of 208 posts

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

#101

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.

I don't think they are, but Apple coming out with this tech would be ideal: everyone copies Apple!

An Apple Watch with an always-on Mirasol display would be great.

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

#102

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…

Or just a refresh rate that isn't what feels like several seconds.

Present devices refresh a 2--8 Hz easily.

Even high-quality refresh is fast, though there is a prominent transition.

With e-ink, there's a distinct difference between paginated navigation and scroll-based, with pagination being strongly preferred.

For web browsing, I recommend EInkBro, which provides paginated navigation as a default. For any longer-form Web reading, that's my preference. It's superior even to Pocket's exceedingly poorly-considered pagination mode.

The other alternative is to print-to-PDF and display that within an e-book reader. Unfortunately, many websites format poorly in that mode, with text being cut at pagination breaks, or omitted entirely.

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

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

not adding a warm light Yes that looks like a strange choice. In videos it looks like that distorts the colors, shifting toward blue. It looks like battery is reasonable on all the Onyx devices if you're not on wifi though, despite the overhead of Android. Probably some heavy throttling if background app activity too. Otherwise, backlights on Kindle ereaders still allow for very long battery life-- how does the Nova…

It depends how you use it. I've gotten over 20 hours screen on time reading mainly comics with it set to refresh every page and WiFi on downloading issues along the way. I don't use the frontlight typically though. I don't charge mine more than once a week but I also don't really browse the web on my Nova 2.

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

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'd love a mechanical keyboard where each individual keycap was its own E-ink display. This would let you change layouts on the fly and have it reflected on the keys.

“George, why did you send ‘I’m a panda’ in the main channel?” George: “I think someone hacked my keyboard when I went to the bathroom.”

Hey, if your phone let you suit the keyboard to the context, I think physical keyboards need to catch up too :)

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

#105
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I realize you are mostly joking, but even having their lawyers go over the licensing contract would cost them far more than 1$. Actually transferring the knowledge of how to manufacture this stuff would probably require low 7 figures for them just to break even on the deal.

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

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claims to be shipping in March: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nemeio-the-customizable-g...

Those clear plastic key-caps do not look nice to type on. Also, this seems to be using a single E-ink screen underneath.

Hopefully they'd be using something slightly textured like the screens on eink note takers so it wouldn't be glass-smooth.

For the single screen, wouldn't the overall effect be mostly the same?

The killer for me is mostly the size. As a portable I guess it's fine, but not what I want to use for full workdays.

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

#107
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to hook up a small e ink screen to a pi and use it with my mechanical keyboard as a modern typewriter of sorts but the prices on eink are so prohibitive it doesn’t seem worth it.

The response time is what makes devices like this kinda annoying.

For text-based interaction, current-generation E-ink is more than suficient.

Source: Own an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi and use it in this mode frequently.

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

#108

This is second hand info, so sorry if it's totally wrong, I'll edit this: E-ink tech is great, but patents and other paper-limitations are slowing down developments of cheap e-ink devices devices, and e-ink will become "great again", when patents expire. I personally see many, many usecases of e-ink all around me, but the prices are way too high for anything that is not either really small or a repurposed old existin…

I've been waiting for e-ink displays to become affordable since the first Raspberry Pi came out. I'm still waiting.

What's your budget / price-point?

New devices are available for Used or displays are in the $50--$100 range, quite possibly less.

Pricing depends on size, resolution, greyscale ranges (1--16 bits, 4 is common for many smaller isplays), and refresh rates.

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

#109

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.

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

#110
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why e-ink isn't ubiquitous. Do you have any source?

Here's a throwaway on HN explaining the problem. [1] Here's an example of E-Ink defending their patents [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 [2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171220005895/en/E-I...

#2 is RFI suing E-Ink claiming E-ink infringed on RFI's patents.
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