E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. Too low-contrast and/or too expensive. It's been a Real Soon Now technology for about two decades.
There was another persistent display technology - chomeric displays. They came from a company called Chomerics, which was acquired by Parker Hannefin, which dropped the product line. Almost everything about those has disappeared from the Web, except that the former factory is now a Superfund site.[1]
This is an LCD screen with active-power measured in micro-amps. This means that memory-lcd is more power-efficient than e-ink even if it updates once every 5 minutes. (though the less you update, the better e-ink gets).
If I’m not mistaken yes the power does go. I have a smartwatch with a 30day+ battery life (Amazfit Bip) which also uses I believe the same type of display.
It’s ~somewhat similar to a calculator 8 segment display in operation - low power, low resolution/pixel density, can be inverted etc. Or maybe old gameboys perhaps?
I’m cautiously optimistic, because two decades is the lifespan of a patent. E Ink the company has been a terrible steward of the technology. May they lose their state-sponsored monopoly and fade into irrelevance in peace.
People don't realize that e-ink and related technologies simply _don't sell_, and rather make up crazy conspiracy theories about eInk for some reason sabotaging their own product.
Consumers don't accept the disadvantages of eInk, such as the low refresh rate, the apparent low contrast, and the extremely poor color reproduction. At the same time, the advantages are rather minuscule; in fact, people have a hard time distinguishing eInk from reflective LCD. They think reflective display == eInk, while in truth many devices popularly seen as "eInk" are actually reflective LCDs (e.g. the Pebble and Garmin smartwatches).
Most companies that have made non-LCD based products are simply out-sold by LCD products and go bankrupt. I could probably name half-a-dozen non-LCD reflective technologies which are dead today without even checking Wikipedia, like Gyricon, Mirasol, the stuff the OLPC used, Flepia, etc. All of them dead or niche.
You just can't point fingers at eInk since some of these technologies faded even before eInk even existed, and some of them are owned by companies which are at least ten times larger than eInk (Qualcomm, Fujitsu, etc.). These theories claiming that eInk is the large neighborhood bully just don't many any sense whatsoever. Qualcomm, for example, _is_ a well-known bully; unlikely to be scared of eInk's portfolio. But Qualcomm released exactly 1 product with Mirasol - which completely flopped in the market - and then gave up on it.
Even price displays are usually LCDs, with only a minority being eInk, but as you can see here, casual hackers have a hard time distinguishing between them.
The small displays they put on smartcards (showing a 2FA or the like) are also LCDs, and even with a practically minuscule battery they last for half a decade, and that's refreshing itself once per hour... I couldn't think of a better usecase for eInk, and yet it fails to beat a much cheaper plain old LCD, save for perhaps if you wear polarizing glasses...
> make up crazy conspiracy theories about eInk for some reason sabotaging their own product.
Why do people make up crazy stories about banks conspiring with the bond-rating agencies to sell bogus financial products to their clients, oltimately crashing the entire market and driving themselves into bancrupsy. I mean, no rational person would do such a thing!
I talked to someone building related tech in the industry and E-Ink the company has a stranglehold on suppliers and leverages that to force compliance despite the patent nearing expiration (blocking anyone else from getting access to those suppliers).
The patent has allowed them to become entrenched and all current suppliers to depend on them. This will be hard to correct even with patent expiration.
I don't remember the specific details (unfortunately) and it's second hand info, but I was disappointed to hear it from someone more involved than I.
E-Ink is apparently engaged in anti-competitive practices. Why should it matter that the market in question is small?
Lots of companies do this. Amazon demands exclusivity for certain book sales, and they have contracts with sellers that make it hard for other marketplaces to undercut them. Qualcomm is famous for abusive practices. The list goes on.
In general, IMO companies should be able to compete by offering a superior product and/or a superior price point and/or a superior experience. They should not be able to compete by getting in each others’ way.
You are of course correct. The far bigger core problem is that our government is generally captured and does not serve one of its core purposes, enforcing competition, i.e. preventing manipulation of markets. A way that a legitimate and constitutional government would do such a thing, would be, e.g., require competitive practices, e.g., e-ink screens must be sold to anyone so wants to buy them at fair price, to put in end products … if the company e-ink wishes to engage in interstate commerce, which is supposed to be regulated by Congress.
However, because Congress and the whole government is inherently illegitimate as is easily objectively measured by its constant, frequent, and persistent failure to abide by the constitution; things like industry capture of government and fraudulent regulatory bodies, is now the norm.
> E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. T
Every price tag at my local grocery store is eInk. Like there must be thousands. I'm guessing there are updated by wifi. I mean that is pretty damn good use and the refresh rate means you saw real energy over LCD.
Funny you should bring this up, I just thought about it today what a terrible development those electronic price tags are from a consumer perspective. Because of course the next step is constantly changing the prices based on customer data telling them how to extract the maximum amount of cash from shoppers. Which is what I noticed at stores where they do have them, in extreme cases they change the prices of some products multiple times a day.
My neighbor is quoted substantially lower prices on the same car sharing app as me, for the exact same cars. I don't know if it's the sole reason but she has a really old smartphone. Actually surprised me she can even still run the app on it.
The phone is maybe possibly part of it but most of actuarial calculations for car rentals are more based around age/zip code/sex and whatever driving history they can find on you than anything else.
Meanwhile in real world, the local grocery store can't even notice when products on their shelves have already expired. Sometimes by quite a long while. Not going to hold my breath for that one.
Maybe for you. But the first Kindle came out in 2007, and Amazon has sold tens of millions of them. The latest, the Kindle Scribe, even allows users to write in books with a pen.
I have an e-ink tablet (Boox Tab X), which is like a Kindle Scribe except it's also a (more or less) full featured Android tablet.
I have a very nice setup with Zotero, where I can sync papers I want to read to the tablet (running Zoo for Zotero), read and mark them up, and then sync the marked up version back to my computer.
I'm very interested in those Boox tablets.
Is there a way to have them display a static image (a custom website or Android app) when they are in standby? Or do they force-switch to some screen saver mode, like many e-readers do?
I've been using it since my previous job bought me a Sony PRS-505 (a co-worker got an Amazon Kindle).
Works well, w/ great battery life, and it really has come into its own w/ the new Kindle Scribe --- a large screen e-ink device which works as an e-reader and has useful note-taking and annotation capabilities (looking forward to seeing what competitors do w/ it --- probably would have bought an Onyx Tab Ultra if the Scribe hadn't been available).
I'd really like to see an affordable display suited to a Raspberry Pi, ideally w/ touch.
I use Onyx A4 reader and it has completely replaced paper for me. Making notes directly to PDFs while I read them is fantastic. And it saves my eyes. The only drawback is the price (around $1k). I am not watching videos on it though.
E-ink should be, but it never seems to get there. Too low-contrast and/or too expensive. It's been a Real Soon Now technology for about two decades.
There was another persistent display technology - chomeric displays. They came from a company called Chomerics, which was acquired by Parker Hannefin, which dropped the product line. Almost everything about those has disappeared from the Web, except that the former factory is now a Superfund site.[1]
[1] https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/CurSites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0...