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E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

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Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#41
post #21
post #8

This could become an awesome secondary travel/camping phone. Sure when I'm home I generally remember to charge my phone every or every other night, but when out and about there are many times when charging is inconvenient of impossible.

You have a phone which you can charge every "other" night and still be running? In my experience the Driod Razr Maxx is the only modern smartphone you can really do that with.

I have an Acre Liquid somethingorother I picked up for $200 or so when my phone died last spring. It's been 14 hours since I took it off charging, and in that time I've made a few phone calls, listened to a couple of hours of mp3s, read a dozen web sites or so, checked my email a couple of times and played a simple game for about 15 minutes and my battery is at 63%.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#42
post #3

It could be useful in India or African countries with not much access to energy. But I doubt people from developed nations would want this. It most likely offers nowhere near the experience of an LCD device. Remember, besides the lack of color issue, e-ink devices work best when the on-screen image is static, and not changing often.

>It most likely offers nowhere near the experience of an LCD device.

But "nowhere near" doesn't have to mean inferior. For people who would rather read than play games or watch videos, this will be superior to an LCD phone as a time passing device. If you communicate mostly by email and text message, it will even be superior as a phone.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#43
e-ink isn't suitable for anything that moves, so it's only going to be good for a really basic phone + contacts + text messaging device. Android seems like massive overkill and a waste of battery for those relatively simple tasks. I think there is still demand for a high quality phone that is light on features and inexpensive.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#44
post #35

I have a crazy idea, how about a touch LCD phone that is: 1) actually small enough to fit in my pocket 2) Not PoS 3 years out-of-date hardware designed so that the phone company can offer a "free" smartphone. The smaller screen would probably greatly improve battery life.

Everywhere outside of North America, this is common.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#45
post #6

I have been thinking about a responsive e-ink for some time. What I would love is a responsive e-ink screen to use for text editing, Imagine a large responsive e-ink screen that you can use for coding, reading, etc... Although for coding it would also need some basic colours.

Yes, responsive e-ink has already been achieved with Vizplex technology as displayed in PocketBook linux based e-readers.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#46
post #35

I have a crazy idea, how about a touch LCD phone that is: 1) actually small enough to fit in my pocket 2) Not PoS 3 years out-of-date hardware designed so that the phone company can offer a "free" smartphone. The smaller screen would probably greatly improve battery life.

Everywhere outside of North America, this is common.

Hands down, my favorite phone ever was a 5000 yen prepaid Japanese cell phone with free in network video chat from 2008.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#47
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an example of vim running on an eink device ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdmX52SCpG0 ). A lightweight, long battery life eink-coder would be a fantastic thing to have when travelling. Grayscale vim would be good enough for me: http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2010/10/newsprintvim-pleasant-...

I'm still waiting on my Raspberry Pi (if it ever gets here, I've been waiting 6 months) with the dreams of turning it into a small, Radio Shack-style Vim machine. Building a case with a keyboard, a small display screen, a command line, and a huge battery. When it's connected to the Internet, it would push the changes up, but when it's not it would cache it locally. Sometimes I like to go camping while I work, for the…

I have similar dreams but then a battery powered emacs machine. As a homebrew Raspberry Pi powered device will probably needs more power then a hacked phone running linux I'll opt for the latter. If only such a phone had a vizplex e-ink display! There is a PocketBook which supports a bluetooth keyboard, also a nice option.

Re: E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life

#48
post #3

It could be useful in India or African countries with not much access to energy. But I doubt people from developed nations would want this. It most likely offers nowhere near the experience of an LCD device. Remember, besides the lack of color issue, e-ink devices work best when the on-screen image is static, and not changing often.

Personally I've been waiting for this device for years. My primary phone usage is reading and composing email, making calls, and listening to music. I also use a Nook Touch to store reading material for reference and entertainment. This new device resolves the two devices into one- what's not to like? If I need internet or video, there are tablets available that provide this functionality in a much more comfortable form factor.

I don't claim to be representative of a large market, but this new device has finally done something that NFC, dual cores, retina, et al have failed to do, which is excite me.

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