[HN Gopher] How E Ink developed full-color e-paper
___________________________________________________________________
How E Ink developed full-color e-paper
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 223 points
Date : 2022-01-22 16:35 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| mmastrac wrote:
| E-ink is the coolest tech with the worst business practices. The
| availability of affordable e-ink tech is just not there. I
| understand the research-intensive nature of these displays, but
| the company itself has been holding back the e-ink market by just
| operating poorly in so many ways.
|
| My biggest worry is that they'll fold at some point, leaving all
| the e-ink patents in the hand of a troll that will hold tech back
| for 20 years.
| diob wrote:
| For real, I just want e ink to flourish (I want a high powered,
| super fast kindle) instead of rent seek. I'd even pay way more
| for it.
| obilgic wrote:
| out of curiosity, isn't that irrelevant since they can just get
| acquired if there was a big opportunity in using this
| technology in a product.
| [deleted]
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Well, some of these patents should already be reaching their
| half-life at least. :)
|
| But yeah, it was a sad day for me when I learned why e-ink
| isn't ubiquitous.
| zouhair wrote:
| > why e-ink isn't ubiquitous.
|
| Do you have any source?
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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/e
| n/E-I...
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| #2 is RFI suing E-Ink claiming E-ink infringed on RFI's
| patents.
| Tagbert wrote:
| The first generation of patents has already expired. The
| company has been issued additional patents for techniques
| that went into the more recent versions.
|
| It means that someone probably could make screens now, but
| they would be lower resolution, slower refresh and have less
| contrast than your typical Kindle. Probably good for some
| uses but probably not enough of a volume to bring prices
| down.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> It means that someone probably could make screens now,
| but they would be lower resolution, slower refresh and have
| less contrast than your typical Kindle. Probably good for
| some uses but probably not enough of a volume to bring
| prices down._
|
| It also means that someone could advance the basic tech in
| directions that haven't been patented.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Is it just excessive licensing fees, or other business
| practices?
| deepspace wrote:
| E-Ink has the worst product management team of any company
| I have ever watched. There are so many applications out
| there begging for low-cost, low-power displays, and they
| are just not addressing that market.
|
| They have an extremely limited selection of products, and
| the ones they do have are priced unreasonably high. They
| seem to be reluctant to enter into bulk OEM agreements with
| anyone, and they charge exorbitant license fees for anyone
| who wants to manufacture displays themselves.
|
| In short, they are considered to be terrible stewards of
| the technology.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| 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 existing device (eg. jailbroken
| kindle)
| berkut wrote:
| Out of interest, is there actually any evidence that patents
| are preventing developments in this area?
| fortran77 wrote:
| No. It's just become a mantra-meme that the thought-leaders
| on Hacker News repeat reflexively whenever there's an article
| (which they haven't read, of course) with e-ink or e-paper in
| the title.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Not with E-ink specifically. But look at the 3D printing
| development. It basically exploded once certain patents
| expired. Now every company I have worked for has had 3D
| printer in use.
| [deleted]
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I've been waiting for e-ink displays to become affordable since
| the first Raspberry Pi came out.
|
| I'm still waiting.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| What's your budget / price-point?
|
| New devices are available for < $200.
|
| 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.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The issue isn't the budget, it's the fact that e-ink
| display cost hasn't really gone down in 5-10 years.
|
| I was expecting 2022 to have $10 e-ink displays I could use
| to replace the 2x16 and 4x16 LCD screens in my Arduino
| projects.
|
| But nope, anything over 2" is tens of dollars still - as it
| was 10 years ago.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'm finding 4" displays for $36 and 7" for under $70.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Ingcool-4-2inch-Display-Module-
| Resolu...
|
| https://www.amazon.com/waveshare-7-5inch-HAT-Raspberry-
| Consu...
|
| For a 4x16 LCD, the 2" displays are probably most
| comparable, and _are_ in the same price-range as the
| equivalent LCD (about $8--$12).
|
| https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Backlight-Display-Arduino-
| MEG...
|
| 2" e-ink _multi-colour_ displays with far higher
| resolution ... are about $20.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/2-13inch-HAT-Raspberry-Three-
| Color-In...
|
| I'm no fan of E-ink's patent monopoly, but you're being
| ever so slightly disingenous / unreasonable here.
| Abroszka wrote:
| I think Dasung and Mira has e-ink 25" monitors, but they are
| just getting released, so not sure how good they actually
| are. I also wonder how they worked around the e-ink patents.
| opencl wrote:
| They didn't work around any patents, they buy the panels
| from the company holding the patents.
|
| This is the panel you'll find in the Dasung and Mira
| monitors: https://shopkits.eink.com/product/25-3%cb%9d-spec
| tra-3100-ep...
| travisporter wrote:
| I've never seen this before outside of medical devices :
| THE PRODUCTS ARE NOT CONSUMER PRODUCTS INTENDED FOR
| PERSONAL, FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD PURPOSES; AND (II)
| PURCHASER IS PURCHASING THE PRODUCTS FOR COMMERCIAL USE
| AND/OR IN A BUSINESS CAPACITY. ORDERS PLACED BY CONSUMERS
| WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED
| aeturnum wrote:
| There are areas where I am more skeptical of how patents are
| used (see: publicly funded medical research that creates
| privately owned patents), but I just don't see this as a
| problem in this case.
|
| This isn't an essential technology - it's a nice addition to
| our display options. There's every reason to believe that new
| tech has actual new costs associated with it and that
| inventions might require elevated rates to make developing new
| tech economical. I don't like everything about patents - but
| they give companies a premium for new tech and the companies
| reveal how to make the tech in return.
|
| It seems to me that if we eliminated patents w/o a new system,
| investing in technology would simply have a lower rate of
| return, and so it would happen less. I actually think that's ok
| - but I think people who bemoan the legal exclusivity that
| companies say enables them to invest in research should
| consider how much longer they would wait for the tech they
| like.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Technology isn't essential until there is a breakthrough.
| Eink allow ultra low power display. If you make it extremely
| cheap it can be worldchanging: Extremely cheap screen that
| draw no power when there is no change.
| cogman10 wrote:
| The issue is the length of time. It takes a year or 2 for
| most companies to make these sorts of breakthroughs. Yet they
| are grant 20 years of ownership over the idea. It isn't as if
| the e-ink investment was a billion dollars and years of
| arduous research.
|
| By them owning the patents to e-ink, others that might
| contribute and advance the technology are blocked out all
| together.
|
| To me, it's reasonable to simply cut the tech patent
| timeframe. Rather than 20 years, what if we moved it back to
| 15, 10, or 5 years?
| hourislate wrote:
| Here is a thread about what you mentioned.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
| wyre wrote:
| 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.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inkplate-6 (800x600) seems
| ok for PS99 (~$135) although it has its own embedded
| processor. Or you can get the slightly lower res
| https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/inky-impression-4
| (640x400) with colour for PS48 (~$65)
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| I have an Inkplate 10. I like it, but it's not a regular
| monitor, it doesn't have any standard ports like HDMI.
| Displaying an image from the SD card takes multiple
| seconds.
| wyre wrote:
| PS99 for a 800x600 monitor is exactly what I mean when I
| say eink is price prohibitive and not worth it.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| The response time is what makes devices like this kinda
| annoying.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| reginaldo wrote:
| Do you say that from experience? I have both a Dasung
| Paperwhite monitor and a fairly hacked reMarkable 1 that I
| use for that purpose. Both work well for typing, as long as
| you type in a way that full refreshes are the exception,
| not the norm.
| smasher164 wrote:
| 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.
| ineedasername wrote:
| This claims to be shipping in March:
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/nemeio-the-
| customizable-g...
| smasher164 wrote:
| Those clear plastic key-caps do not look nice to type on.
| Also, this seems to be using a single E-ink screen
| underneath.
| ineedasername wrote:
| 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.
| smasher164 wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think a single screen is problematic as
| long as the keycaps feel alright to type on.
| withinboredom wrote:
| "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."
| smasher164 wrote:
| Hey, if your phone let you suit the keyboard to the
| context, I think physical keyboards need to catch up too :)
| frampytown wrote:
| Do you think you'd buy an e-ink device that was hackable to
| explore some of these use cases? I'm thinking a battery
| powered, WiFi/BT, minimal linux OS with good power management,
| powerful enough to run chromium embedded for rendering.
|
| I can imagine a few people on here interested in such a device
| for calendar, home automation, surf updates, whatever. Or does
| it already exist?
| Abroszka wrote:
| I can't wait for a proper ACEP eInk device. I have a "colour"
| eInk with the RGB filter, but it's horrible. There is a very
| visible "screendoor" effect. Basically you can see each
| individual pixel of the filter layer. I wouldn't recommend it.
| jszymborski wrote:
| So what's the over-under on E-ink replacing our current computer
| monitors much like we've come to replace cathode ray tubes.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This depends on your use-case.
|
| I've described e-ink this way:
|
| - Persistence is free. Once set, the display will show that
| content indefinitely without power.
|
| - Pixels are cheap. Display resolutions are in the 200--300 DPI
| range (effectively competitive with laserprint), and could be
| pushed higher at a cost. Line-art and halftone images render
| beautifully. Gradient-shaded images are limited by greyscale
| ranges (1--16), and require dithering for best effect.
|
| - Paints are expensive. Both in terms of energy, it's
| _changing_ the display which costs. These costs are fairly
| modest, though for mobile devices that 's a concern.
|
| - Refreshes are slow. And dependent on display quality: higher
| quality -> slower refresh. Rates tend to be 1--16Hz for most
| present devices. Screen animations and even video are possible,
| though generally strongly discouraged.
|
| - Colour is limited, often nonexistent. Most devices are
| monochrome with limited greyscale ranges (as noted above).
| Where colour does exist, it is low-saturation and low-fidelity
| --- useful for distinguishing elements, but not a faithful
| high-saturation reproduction. Any graphic design dependent on
| colour will tend to fail badly on e-ink. Foreground/background
| contrast is also somewhat limited --- constrained more in the
| dark "white" value than the by a lighter "black".
|
| - Pagination is strongly preferred to scroll for navigation.
| Changing the entire screen at once is both faster and much less
| confusing than scrolling with many repeat updates.
|
| - Display is _reflective_ rather than _emissive_. On-device
| lighting is possible, but best effects are with external
| illumination. _Devices perform far better under bright and full
| sunlight than emissive technology._ This is in fact their
| preferred use mode. This affects both where devices are used
| and usable (generally _increasing_ options), and the specific
| qualities of typographic and graphic designs.
|
| These are ultimately _properites of the medium_ , and both
| designers and users should work with them.
|
| For text and data use, with limited animations, and limited lo-
| fidelity use of colour, e-ink is very well suited. Large-ish
| displays (up to 13" and larger) can be hand-held, or fit to a
| stand rather than permanently mounted on a desk. They're
| available as external displays for desktop and laptop
| computers. Power draw is quite low. Outdoor use is excellent.
| Use as incidental informational displays is also well-suited,
| e.g., news and weather wall-mount, information, messages, or
| notifications.
|
| As tools for image, video, or video-based gaming, e-ink is far
| less suitable.
|
| Back in the day, a frequent refrain of Linux enthusiasts was
| "Linux is not Windows" --- the two operating systems have
| different capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
|
| In the same vein, e-ink is not emissive. There are strengths
| and weaknesses. Attempting to use e-ink for tasks to which it
| is poorly suited will end badly. On the other hand, it has
| capabilities which emissive displays cannot hope to match. Play
| to its strengths.
| saxonww wrote:
| 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.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| 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, maybe achieve sub-rotation, and thus achieve full color
| range.
|
| Actually if they're pigments... we're looking forward for
| CMYK. That's 4 separate pigments stuffed thrice into a pixel,
| that need to rotate separately! Possible? Difficult.
| [deleted]
| saxonww wrote:
| The article details where they're at now. They do have a
| product using a CMYW scheme, but the refresh and saturation
| are not good enough. The consumer-acceptable product is a
| standard monochrome with color filters and a front light,
| which is better, but has lower resolution.
|
| I suppose with intensive R&D they might figure out how to
| have acceptable refresh and saturation at competitive
| resolution, but absent a really big shift in how people
| view emissive displays, I think they will always be niche.
|
| By acceptable, I mean: can I watch a movie on it and it not
| feel like a flipbook or slideshow; can I game on it. The
| article talks about how (at least initially) the pigment
| transition typically took less than half a second. Is this
| similar to the response time on an LCD? Those are typically
| 5ms or less now, roughly 100x faster.
| egypturnash wrote:
| 1 ms = 1/1000 of a second.
|
| 500ms = half a second.
|
| "Less than half a second" is probably something like 450
| ms, based on my assumption that if it was closer to 1/3
| or 1/4s they would have said that instead.
|
| Film is traditionally 24 frames/second, or about
| 41.6ms/frame. A lot of animation is "on twos", which
| means one drawing is exposed twice for an effective frame
| rate of 12 fps, 83.3ms/frame. Which is very close to the
| minimum frame rate; my experience as a former animator is
| that things start to break down into fast slideshow
| instead of a moving image around 10 fps.
|
| (Video is faster, about 50 or 60 fields a second for PAL
| and NTSC; your computer may have a higher refresh rate.
| I'm mostly concerned with the minimum viable speeds for
| "this is a moving image" here.)
|
| If you chase the links near the end there is a review of
| one of the devices using the first version of their
| technology; full-screen refreshes are the usual very
| visible flash of white-black-new page to reset every
| pixel.
| saxonww wrote:
| This is a tangent but I wonder if 24fps is what you
| should consider acceptable today. Yes, movies are 24fps,
| but I've always felt like that was a byproduct of
| economics which we're stuck with now because of
| tradition. No one wants a 24Hz desktop monitor, that's
| for sure; when the first 4k displays became generally
| available and the connection standards of the time could
| only push them at 30Hz, people absolutely noticed and
| disliked it.
|
| Another thing I pulled from the article that I forgot
| earlier - they talked about their current-gen color E-Ink
| being able to represent 50k colors. Not quite a 16 bit
| color palette. We're getting to where LCDs commonly
| advertise support for a billion colors (10 bit panels).
| They have a long way to go before people will consider
| the color reproduction acceptable for general use.
|
| If and when E-Ink gets to the point where color LCDs are
| today, we're probably going to be able to make "8K" high-
| refresh microled or self-emissive quantum dot displays.
| The reflective low-power nature of E-Ink will always have
| a place IMO but it's just hard to see people in volume
| valuing that over the speed, resolution, and color
| reproduction of a contemporary emissive display.
| egypturnash wrote:
| I wouldn't want a 24fps display either.
|
| I would be pretty happy with an e-ink display that's
| about as reflective as nice ink on glossy paper even if
| it's not 300dpi, I've been waiting to be able to sit out
| in the sun and work without my screen's light having to
| try to overpower the sun for a _long_ time.
| kadoban wrote:
| Basically impossible. They could be great niche monitors, for
| reading text or viewing mostly static content. At best maybe
| for kind of general web browsing, but even that is asking a
| _lot_ of the tech.
| sroussey wrote:
| Or eInk body for your car
| Tagbert wrote:
| Talk to BMW
|
| "BMW's color-changing concept vehicle"
| https://news.yahoo.com/bmw-color-changing-concept-
| vehicle-16...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| 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
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| 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.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| In theory, they could do the "flicker black" as a black
| band that moves across the screen every so often.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| It would be a shame if this e-ink display that is
| advertised as "natural" induces more epileptic events than
| "artificial" light-emitting panels.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I don't think there's a worry about epileptic events with
| the short flash sequences of e-ink. I'm not a
| neurologist, but I think you need a reasonably long
| sequence of continued flashing to trigger an event.
| Tagbert wrote:
| 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.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| There's a periodic full refresh to clear any "ghosted"
| pixesl, often at a user-definable frequency. This occurs
| only during a display update, so yes, as long as you're
| looking at static text, there won't be a flash.
|
| The trade-off is of pixel ghosting vs. flash. The more
| frequently the screen is fully refreshed, the less
| ghosting.
|
| In practice, I tend to set this value to about 20
| refreshes for reading texts, and will frequently manually
| refresh the display when reading Web content in a browser
| where scrolling is more prevalent.
|
| For monospace (terminal) displays, the fact that each
| character tends to update in the same screen cell makes
| the ghosting issue less significant and noticeable. What
| happens is that the background gets somewhat greyer as
| text is read or scrolled, but there isn't the effect of
| strong imprints under the text as with graphic or typeset
| content. A refresh largely has the effect of brightening
| the background.
|
| Noticeable, yes. Annoying? Largely not.
| bloopernova wrote:
| I'd like a dual-layer tablet screen. One layer is e-ink for
| reading, the other is a standard OLED screen. Since I'm
| wishing, I'd like it to be 16k and something like 1200dpi :)
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| While we're at it, make it so that you can designate specific
| parts of the screen to be e-ink or OLED haha
| dqpb wrote:
| I'm more interested in the other article:
|
| How E Ink Failed to Bring Their Product to Consumers
| teawrecks wrote:
| Why does that interest you more?
| dqpb wrote:
| Because I want one.
| amelius wrote:
| The colors in the opening image look faded.
| bhauer wrote:
| 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.
| amelius wrote:
| For comparison, this is what the Alice in Wonderland cover is
| supposed to look like:
|
| http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pW6QZ0TMgIU/T5t2xpQjrfI/AAAAAAAAAM.
| ..
| ineedasername wrote:
| They are very faded compared to a normal screen. With no
| backlight and in direct natural light, the Kaleido screens look
| similar to a color newspaper or many comics. (Some comics use
| paper and printing that produces much more vibrant color
| though)
|
| In artificial light a lot depends on the specifics of the
| environment. Trying one out in warmer light, somewhat
| indirectly (light overhead, screen partly vertical for reading)
| it was a little dark, and needed the backlight. It was a cool
| backlight, so the warm overhead light combined with it to
| counteract a bit of the shift toward blue. In the dark w/o
| external light, the cool backlight very much shifted color
| towards blue.
| ineedasername wrote:
| 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 choice.
|
| Unfortunately, color eink are roughly 100 dpi compared to the 300
| of b&w, although it's a layer over the b&w display so normal
| black and white content is still much crisper. The color layer
| does make it all appear darker though.
|
| Also, ghosting can be a problem. Onyx has a few refresh settings
| that minimize it at the cost of refresh time. It looks like note
| taking is usually done on a faster refresh rate with occasional
| full screen refreshes to clean things up.
|
| I'm not sure the tech is fully there yet, but it looks like it
| works well enough for things like color PDFs and comics. For
| heavy note taking color is probably not a requirement for most. I
| like the idea of the other larger b&w Onyx readers running
| android though. The Play store apps would add a lot of options
| over the Remarkable.
| solarkraft wrote:
| 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 tablet.
| The low refresh rate takes a bit of time to get used to, but I
| find that it causes you to interact with the device more slowly
| and carefully at points, which reduces the chance for
| distractions a bit (it's not that low though, you can actually
| watch the occasional video, the ghosting isn't actually even
| that bad).
|
| I don't think the note capability is very good with the default
| app (I think it's unusable, in fact), but a new mode adds
| compatibility with OneNote (which I also don't like, but is
| probably less buggy). It's still a brilliant device for reading
| using Koreader, browsing the Web using Fennec/EinkBro and
| taking notes using a pen on GBoard's swipe input functionality.
| Just mind that the battery doesn't last as ridiculously long as
| you may be used to with this usage pattern. I get through about
| a day with fairly heavy usage.
|
| A color display would be a welcome addition, but the gigantic
| oversight the Nova 3 Color's developers have made is not adding
| a warm light. It's what I exclusively use on my device.
| tyre wrote:
| What are you reading on it? I'm considering getting something
| for reading technical books. Do you think this would fit?
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Why do you say the Boox Note app is unusable? It works well
| in my experience, it can sync automatically to Dropbox and I
| can sync notebooks between my two Boox devices. The only
| thing that sucks is the text recognition IMO. But it's got
| templates, layers, different stroke types down.
|
| Having tried the Onenote mode it's a bit of a hack and
| doesn't feel great to use.
| ant6n wrote:
| I dunno. I feel like I waited a long time for a good note
| taking device with a eink screen. I think I'll just get an
| iPad Mini and pen.
| ineedasername wrote:
| _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 2 fare? A week of
| battery would still be pretty great for a tablet note taking
| tablet w/ Android if it can manage that with occasional wifi
| use to sync notes or check email.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| 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.
| tomComb wrote:
| Having no official play store also means you aren't getting the
| silent security updates today are a critical aspect of Android
| security.
|
| I wonder why they have avoided Android certification. It is the
| only thing holding me back at this point.
| seneca wrote:
| 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.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Not just GPL, if you consider this is a communist country. It
| violates humanity as well.
| [deleted]
| ineedasername wrote:
| Wow yes, that's a downside. I found a forum post [0] where
| someone monitored web traffic and it was analytics data, but
| still not great. And the GPL violation is an abuse of the
| FOSS community they rely on for free development.
|
| [0] https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=335605
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Citation requested.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| I wonder what could be done about that? Could someone sue
| them for the copywritten code?
| kadoban wrote:
| Anyone who owns copyright on part of the infringed code
| should be able to. International seems like a pain, they're
| a Chinese company, I think? Should be able to at least
| block import if you try hard enough.
|
| I'm not a lawyer though.
| smeej wrote:
| I've been using an Onyx Boox Poke 2 Color for about a year now,
| mostly to upload epubs and highlight in 4 colors using Google
| Play Books, which then sends all the highlights to a Google Doc
| per book. I'd say that device is "color" like the Gameboy Color
| was "color." It certainly isn't vivid, but the colors are
| distinguishable.
|
| I wish I knew how to take that output (a really annoying table
| format) and process it into an outline, though. That would be a
| real game-changer for me!
| jagger27 wrote:
| 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 would be lovely. It would be a lot
| harder to get to that effective dot pitch with colour displays.
|
| 300 dpi should be the entry level.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| Kuinox wrote:
| I want color, to read code, I can't give up on syntax
| highlighting
| jagger27 wrote:
| That's a good point. I think one or two colours mixed with
| font weights and italics could get us pretty far.
|
| Response time is a pretty critical metric for me when it
| comes to coding. I don't want to have to wait a couple
| hundred milliseconds to scroll or switch files, so I'm not
| convinced coding is a great fit for the existing tech. Code
| isn't read top to bottom like a novel.
|
| That said, hell yes I want less eye strain when coding. I'm
| sure we can all relate to that.
| emteycz wrote:
| I found out that text styling (bold, underline, italic, and
| different fonts) are more than enough.
| ectopod wrote:
| I've seen this in a few software books. It works very well.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I've been wondering for a while whether syntax highlighting
| had a role in certain code style changes. Like the one
| where open curly brackets were placed at the start of a new
| line but nowadays are just appended to the end. Without
| syntax highlighting the older style seems to make more
| sense as it makes scope delimiters more visible without
| using colors.
| emteycz wrote:
| IMHO it's just preference - at least the last 15 years -
| but now propagated as a sort of common default/standard
| with the advent of auto code formatting tools. C# still
| does what you say (and practically always did - but the
| Mono people formatted it differently) while Java and
| JavaScript do the other. Before Prettier, I formatted JS
| code like C# - I thought it's nicer. Now I use the other
| because that's what Prettier does and it's usefulness
| greatly outweighs my preference.
| mannschott wrote:
| Back in the day(tm) Think's Pascal used bold, italics and
| underlining to do syntax highlighting because the Mac's
| screen was black-and-white. It would be a compromise: you
| can't encode as much information into the text's appearance
| without access to color, but it could be sufficient depending
| on your requirements.
| jagger27 wrote:
| I'm thinking of old Visual Studio syntax highlighting where
| it primarily uses green and blue. Maybe pick one of those
| like E-ink panels can already do.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| A few years back, I started a new theme that I call "bland".
| I kept it at just pure black on pure white, keywords bold,
| comments italic for a week. After that, I agreed that some
| colour was useful, so I made strings red, numbers blue and
| comments green. All nice and high contrast. Since then I've
| added a little more from time to time, e.g. lifetimes in Rust
| are italic red, and attributes and macros in Rust code were
| orange for a few months but are now just italic black (though
| I still use orange for macro_rules $variables), but I've kept
| it all deliberately minimal and ultra-high contrast. I use
| the same styling (except for the background colour) on my
| website. I made a bland-dark somewhere along the way that I
| very occasionally use, also used on my website.
|
| I should probably try something radically different again in
| another different direction soon. There are generally
| somewhat better options available for semantic highlighting
| now than there were five or ten years ago.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Or just a refresh rate that isn't what feels like several
| seconds.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| 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.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| 600dpi A4 means roughly 5000x7000 (35,000,000 pixels). Even
| 300dpi is 2500x3500 (8,750,000 pixels).
|
| The current typical resolution for 10-13'' tablets (A4 is about
| 14.3'') is 1404x1872, which is 2,628,288 pixels. You're asking
| for 13x as many pixels, and 3x as an entry level. However you
| arrange it, it's going to use a _lot_ more power and probably
| need more memory and a more powerful CPU /GPU.
| jagger27 wrote:
| Your math is correct, but the refresh rates are so low that I
| don't see it being an issue. Not to mention that by the time
| said panel is available on the market CPUs and GPUs will be
| better.
|
| Call it 400 dpi? 450, maybe? It doesn't seem too farfetched
| to me.
|
| Also, there's a huge difference in bandwidth requirements if
| the display is monochrome. Consider the framebuffer needed
| for a conventional 8-bit colour depth display at 5000 by 7000
| versus a monochrome, two colour, or a grayscale 16 shade
| e-ink panel. 24 bit RGB: 105 MB 5 bit
| grayscale: 21.875 MB 2 bit: 8.75 MB mono: 4.375
| MB
|
| Pair that with a low refresh rate and partial screen updates
| and it's suddenly not so crazy.
| yeetaccount4 wrote:
| Has there been any progress on extending e ink lifespan?
| fallat wrote:
| What's the current lifespan? My original Kindle is still
| working just fine.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Don't you find the low-resolution and the low-contrast of the
| first generation panels annoying?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That's a non-issue so far as I'm aware.
|
| The displays will last and function for years. Long enough that
| other components are generally long obsolete.
| gnicholas wrote:
| 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...
| empalms wrote:
| 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 circadian rhythm
| for 8hrs+ a day
| RL_Quine wrote:
| Sharp Memory LCDs are close. They are active, but so close to
| being zero power you could keep them running with a stern
| glare. They have absurd contrast, can be updated at tens of
| hertz or faster, and are high resolution. They're never made in
| large sizes, but you will see them on things like the Play
| Date.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm not convinced the issue is patents. It might just be that
| eInk is great for a few nice applications, so there just isn't
| that much demand.
| christkv wrote:
| The one laptop per child had one but never went anywhere
| Sunspark wrote:
| It had a transflective LCD.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Qualcomm are sitting on a reflective display technology
| "mirasol" that:
|
| 1. Doesn't hit E-ink's patents 2. Is colour 3. Has fast lcd-
| like refresh rates
|
| The reviews of the few devices that were made were excellent.
| The main problem seemed to be the quality of other aspects of
| the devices that featured them. I find it incredibly
| frustrating that this hasn't made it into the mainstream.
| Retric wrote:
| Mirasol is very dead tech at this point.
| https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-
| and...
|
| I think they tried to ramp things up before it was ready, and
| nobody was interested by the time they got it to work.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| 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.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Ah for fucks sake
| Retric wrote:
| That's just Apple reusing the physical factory not the
| tech. Qualcomm completely abandoned the technology and
| couldn't find anyone to license it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Thanks, but that is allmost equally disappointing as it
| hints there were major problems with the technology.
| jrockway wrote:
| I guess they didn't look hard enough. I would have bought
| the tech for $1.
| Retric wrote:
| I realize you are mostly joking, but even having their
| lawyers go over the licensing contract would cost them
| far more than 1$. 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.
| mertd wrote:
| If only there were deep pocketed people that took bets on
| this kind of stuff instead of chasing the web3 bandwagon.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I don't think they are, but Apple coming out with this tech
| would be ideal: everyone copies Apple!
| m-p-3 wrote:
| An Apple Watch with an always-on Mirasol display would be
| great.
| justincormack wrote:
| I saw a device once at the Qualcomm office it really was very
| nice, bright colour in full sunlight. I don't think they ever
| made them cheaply or very large.
| throwthere wrote:
| When does the original parent run out? Will that be the end of
| this or are there other "process" aka bs patents coming?
| empalms wrote:
| Good question.
|
| Skimming the uspto's documentation, identifying the term does
| not appear to be a straightforward process [0]. Someone with
| more experience in the matter might be able to say.
|
| [0] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/laws/patent-term-calculator
| beckman466 wrote:
| > When does the original parent run out?
|
| ten years. so just after the world collapses. it's so great
| that we are blocking the development of vital tech /s. i
| mean, imagine a world without today's level of production of
| laptop screens/OLED TVs/LCD TVs/phone/tablet screens. all
| those toxic chemicals. there's so many things we don't need a
| flashlight being shone in our faces for, and (as someone else
| in this thread already mentioned) our circadian rhythm being
| disrupted for.
|
| of course e-ink tech and the health of our eyes and sleep is
| just the tip of the iceberg. in the larger perspective
| capitalist firms are suffocating the earth with their single-
| use, non-modular, non-upgradeable, black box e-waste. they're
| not even 'tools' to me because the living and breathing
| Silicon Valley AI is using and abusing us (the workers)
| through these 'products'.
|
| i abhor the intellectual property system and monopolized
| vital technologies, it means capitalism makes the worst
| technological tools.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Yes there is. Sharp has their memory-in-pixel LCDs which are
| reflective and have less power consumption than traditional
| LCDs for some tasks. They've been used in stuff like the Pebble
| watches and the current Garmin Fenix line. I think a few of
| their denshi note devices have also used them. I don't think
| they make them in sizes big enough for stuff like monitors
| though.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Have you seen Dasung's Paperlike 253 monitor?
|
| [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aUizYZNbAE
| empalms wrote:
| Amazing, but does it stray into E Ink's protective sphere?
|
| No doubt there are manufacturers around the world who are
| exploring quality general-purpose reflective displays for
| consumer applications, the tech has been around for some
| time. I could be mistaken but it seems more a question of
| commercial viability rather than technical capability
| jMyles wrote:
| ...or if they can simply be produced in a jurisdiction which
| does not recognize this patent?
| slater wrote:
| ...and then NOT sold in jurisdictions where the patent is
| recognized.
| jMyles wrote:
| This does not seem like a difficult problem to solve,
| compared to the actual engineering, production, and scaling
| challenges.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The problem would require turning the entire global IP &
| supporting legal systems on their head. WTO, nation-
| specific laws, etc.
|
| Technology seems to move a lot faster than paradigm
| shifts in government.
| jMyles wrote:
| This is like saying that, if you want to use a particular
| prohibited plant or compound, you need to first end drug
| prohibition and the worldwide system of cartel
| profiteering.
|
| While it is most certainly a good idea to do that, you
| don't need to wait until the process is complete to
| include these items in your diet.
| ineedasername wrote:
| To paraphrase Planck: technology advances with the funeral of
| each patent.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Maybe not originaly, but as of today it very much seems like
| it. Related: maybe we will be done with covid, by the time
| the vaccines patents run out.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Zikon http://www.zikon.com ClearInk
| https://clearinkdisplays.com
| JetSetWilly wrote:
| There's the attractively named DES Slurry technology which I
| think has even been in shipping devices:
|
| https://goodereader.com/blog/e-paper/des-display-electronic-...
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