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I didn't downvote... but if you're being downvoted it's probably for ignoring the flywheel effect needed to scale novel tech in the market. Yes e-ink has high

I didn't downvote... but if you're being downvoted it's probably for ignoring the flywheel effect needed to scale novel tech in the market. Yes e-ink has high wastage, and yes demand is low, but having had a strong arming expensive patent holder didn't help the situation. The patents are actually expiring/expired but at some point the damage is already done. A great corollarly to e-ink is 3d printers: they were very expensive, very low volume products that needed to recoup expensive development costs... but when the 200 lbs gorilla sitting on the market in the form of patents started to die down, a lot more players start to iterate, which unlocked advancements, which made things cheaper and more accessible, which improved demand, which then incentivized more advancements... and now we have $400 printers that outperform $10,000 printers from not that long ago. Most display tech starts high wastage, low demand. Patents aren't a guaranteed death, but e-ink was just a bit too far off the path for absolutely required innovations to overcome the added resistance. In the mean time other technologies got better: sunlight performance of non-eink displays has improved dramatically for example. Now the moment has probably passed and e-ink is doomed to stay a niche sideline product as a result.

rnk 3y ago
Great points. Plus almost everyone always gets downvoted for everything, then it comes back. I always wonder why many of my "brilliant" comments get downvoted, but often come back by the next day.
- mikewarot 3y ago
  Downvotes are emotionally driven, and limited to -4 (I think)... upvotes on the other hand, have no apparent limit.
solardev 3y ago
> sunlight performance of non-eink displays has improved dramatically for example. Can you talk more about this? My phones and laptops are still as bad as ever in direct sun. Did I miss some major development...?
- BoorishBears 3y ago
  You should upgrade your phones and laptops then: Apple just released a phone that does 2000 nits outdoors, and similarly the MBP can dip into its 1000 nit sustained HDR brightness rating for SDR content if in direct sunlight In reality this is one of those slow burn deals where the improvements in anti-glare coatings, bonding between digitizer and displays, and brightness come slowly enough that it's easy to take for granted just how awful old displays used to be. We've come a long way from the days of hazy plastic suspended millimeters above the actual display, which in turn had its own coating with a different refractive index leaving two layers of reflections to deal with
  - solardev 3y ago
    Oh, I thought there was some revolutionary coating I missed out on... I actually have a M2 MacBook Pro and a Pixel 7, both of which get decently bright, but neither of which is really usable under direct glare. And in XDR mode, the SDR colors get super washed out. HDR is a gimmick as far as I can tell. I'd trade either for a usable transflective display or a regular matte screen from early 2000s Dell. I don't think the answer to glare is to just make the display brighter. That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so the sun doesn't seem as bright... I tried a 3m anti glare coating, and that worked well for keeping out direct light, but it darkened the screen so much it was barely visible at max brightness. The Steam Deck had some etched glass thing that seemed a little better (maybe the iMac too?) but I still wasn't able to use it in direct sun. The only display I've used so far that was actually comfortable outside in the sun are e-ink ones, with matte screens also somewhat usable in shade on a sunny day. My M2 MacBook? Useless outside and barely usable under office florescent light. I hate the Apple glare. Makes movies look nice in the dark but useless for day to day office work, IMO.
    - BoorishBears 3y ago
      What you described is EDR: where non HDR content is artificially limited to allow HDR content to contrast better. In sunlight the screen will stay in SDR and use HDR brightness levels without any tweaks, which doesn't result in washing anything out > That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so the sun doesn't seem as bright... ... that's exactly the point of e-Ink: with minimal power you get brightness that rivals the sunlight you're holding the device in. With infinitely efficient OLEDs, we'd just crank the brightness on the lit pixels high enough to match the brightness of a white piece of paper in sunlight and have a better e-ink: unfortunately in the real world that'd generate more heat and take more power than mobile devices can afford right now. At the end of the day we have both matte and glossy displays with reflective characteristics that rival old school matte displays because of improvements made across the stack... but nostalgia makes us assume things were very different than they were.

rnk 3y ago

Great points. Plus almost everyone always gets downvoted for everything, then it comes back. I always wonder why many of my "brilliant" comments get downvoted, but often come back by the next day.

mikewarot 3y ago
Downvotes are emotionally driven, and limited to -4 (I think)... upvotes on the other hand, have no apparent limit.

solardev 3y ago

> sunlight performance of non-eink displays has improved dramatically for example. Can you talk more about this? My phones and laptops are still as bad as ever in direct sun. Did I miss some major development...?

BoorishBears 3y ago
You should upgrade your phones and laptops then: Apple just released a phone that does 2000 nits outdoors, and similarly the MBP can dip into its 1000 nit sustained HDR brightness rating for SDR content if in direct sunlight In reality this is one of those slow burn deals where the improvements in anti-glare coatings, bonding between digitizer and displays, and brightness come slowly enough that it's easy to take for granted just how awful old displays used to be. We've come a long way from the days of hazy plastic suspended millimeters above the actual display, which in turn had its own coating with a different refractive index leaving two layers of reflections to deal with
- solardev 3y ago
  Oh, I thought there was some revolutionary coating I missed out on... I actually have a M2 MacBook Pro and a Pixel 7, both of which get decently bright, but neither of which is really usable under direct glare. And in XDR mode, the SDR colors get super washed out. HDR is a gimmick as far as I can tell. I'd trade either for a usable transflective display or a regular matte screen from early 2000s Dell. I don't think the answer to glare is to just make the display brighter. That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so the sun doesn't seem as bright... I tried a 3m anti glare coating, and that worked well for keeping out direct light, but it darkened the screen so much it was barely visible at max brightness. The Steam Deck had some etched glass thing that seemed a little better (maybe the iMac too?) but I still wasn't able to use it in direct sun. The only display I've used so far that was actually comfortable outside in the sun are e-ink ones, with matte screens also somewhat usable in shade on a sunny day. My M2 MacBook? Useless outside and barely usable under office florescent light. I hate the Apple glare. Makes movies look nice in the dark but useless for day to day office work, IMO.
  - BoorishBears 3y ago
    What you described is EDR: where non HDR content is artificially limited to allow HDR content to contrast better. In sunlight the screen will stay in SDR and use HDR brightness levels without any tweaks, which doesn't result in washing anything out > That's liking shining a flashlight into your eyes so the sun doesn't seem as bright... ... that's exactly the point of e-Ink: with minimal power you get brightness that rivals the sunlight you're holding the device in. With infinitely efficient OLEDs, we'd just crank the brightness on the lit pixels high enough to match the brightness of a white piece of paper in sunlight and have a better e-ink: unfortunately in the real world that'd generate more heat and take more power than mobile devices can afford right now. At the end of the day we have both matte and glossy displays with reflective characteristics that rival old school matte displays because of improvements made across the stack... but nostalgia makes us assume things were very different than they were.