A lot of people are commenting on the price but the thing that struck me was the thickness. Based on the images it looks to at least double the thickness of the phone!
PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of people no longer have printers, or at least working ones. They'd have to find an Internet cafe and brave the risk of keyloggers, print things off at work, or get a document printing company to do it.
Or print it at a kiosk upon check-in?
I can check-in from my phone.
Edit: downvotes don't make that any less true. The situation the OP was observing could very well have been that the person had checked-in via phone and when boarding was starting, the phone's battery died.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#33(silly) Price aside, why is it only for iPhones? Surely the bigger market is Android devices... or both... I see a similar trend with docking station/speakers. I've yet to find a model that has a dock for micro usb. All of them are iPhone centric with an optional cable to the headphone jack of other phones.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#34I used to wear a Pebble watch every day and found it useful but not overly so. That needed charging every 5-7 days, and this claims to last a week on a single charge. I don't wear the pebble watch any more because as lazy as it sounds, I kept forgetting to charge it when it ran out of battery, and there were days where I was walking around with a dead watch, which was at that point essentially an expensive wristband.…
This display is actually electronic paper, so the display doesn't use power once it's set. Power is just used by the bluetooth and rest of the bits to monitor for changes in the display. If they could let you switch it on only when you want to change it, it could likely last a lot longer. The Pebble has a fake "e-paper" screen that's actually not electronic paper, it's a black and white LCD which constantly draws paper.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#35I was standing behind someone in a queue for boarding a flight whose phone died from lack of charge as they were about to hand it over to be scanned - so having your boarding pass on an e-ink display might actually be a pretty good idea...
Is it really worth $129 so that you don't have to print out a paper copy of your boarding pass when your battery is low?
Think of the trees. (of course manufacturing this extra piece of electronics is probably not "good" for the environment, but assuming that many people already have a smartphone, it makes sense to have a boarding pass QR code as opposed to getting everyone to print an A4 each time. Just think how many pages would be saved per year!)
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#36(silly) Price aside, why is it only for iPhones? Surely the bigger market is Android devices... or both... I see a similar trend with docking station/speakers. I've yet to find a model that has a dock for micro usb. All of them are iPhone centric with an optional cable to the headphone jack of other phones.
Bigger market with Android devices? Very few Android phones will get even close to what any of the iPhone models sold. And docks for iphones are a lot more interesting, because there is an established standard for controlling iOS devices externally, which works with music and many many iOS apps. Not to mention, that for both 30-pin and Lightning connectors the device playing the music is the iphone, not the dock. With Micro USB the only way to do anything would be to access the filesystem and play all the music files found. But that's incredibly difficult, because of different standards, root Android directory being polluted with files for apps, and there is no way to control apps on the phone. Android phones are horrible for standards - mine doesn't even work with a regular remote(next/back + mic) on my headphones.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#37(silly) Price aside, why is it only for iPhones? Surely the bigger market is Android devices... or both... I see a similar trend with docking station/speakers. I've yet to find a model that has a dock for micro usb. All of them are iPhone centric with an optional cable to the headphone jack of other phones.
The android market is fragmented in many different manufacturers. I'm pretty sure that none of those individual manufacturers comes close to the market share the iPhone has.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#38Reason to buy for me: read an ebook in the sunlight.
If these perform well, it might be the perfect reason to move to a phablet sized device. I don't really need the extra real estate for my phone, but I'd need it for reading.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
one day battery life [...] would (IMO) be preferable over a 2 or 3 day battery life That makes absolutely no sense. Nobody forces you to use the "extra" battery time. Nothing stops you from pretending it doesn't exist and charging your gizmo every night.
While I don't think it's a big enough reason to actively decide to put a smaller battery in, I'm sure I'm not the only one who hates putting things on charge for longer than they need. The battery losing its capacity is probably the single biggest reason for me having to replace my devices, and whether it's an outdated notion or not, it's in my head that leaving something on charge when it's full kills the battery.
Pushing a lithium-ion cell up to max charge and leaving it there probably shortens its life a bit, but what's much worse is running it down.
Re: PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone
#40(silly) Price aside, why is it only for iPhones? Surely the bigger market is Android devices... or both... I see a similar trend with docking station/speakers. I've yet to find a model that has a dock for micro usb. All of them are iPhone centric with an optional cable to the headphone jack of other phones.
Bigger market with Android devices? Very few Android phones will get even close to what any of the iPhone models sold. And docks for iphones are a lot more interesting, because there is an established standard for controlling iOS devices externally, which works with music and many many iOS apps. Not to mention, that for both 30-pin and Lightning connectors the device playing the music is the iphone, not the dock. Wit…
This is not true, most modern Android devices support USB audio class as "very strictly recommended" in Android Compatibility Definition Document and everything supports USB HID devices. Just implement USB sound card and USB keyboard to play music and control it.