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> I personally love this. The tech is awesome, but the E-Ink company is holding it back. We would have had large and cost effective displays well over a decad

> I personally love this. The tech is awesome, but the E-Ink company is holding it back. We would have had large and cost effective displays well over a decade ago if E-Ink (the company) didn't patent patrol the technology. It's impossible to do anything in this space without touching their patents, and so independent of their direct involvement and licensing, there's no third party innovation or competition happening. These displays have had so much promise, but they've taken decades to evolve into diverse shapes and sizes. And they still cost an arm and a leg relative to other display technologies. Other commentary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26173409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26173409

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AshamedCaptain 2y ago
Why is this _always_ repeated? Where are these patents? Where are the examples of eInk going against their competition??? Because you have a _myriad_ eink-like technologies from many other companies, most of them literally better than eink, that were available but were abandoned after they failed in the market. One example I particularly liked is Mirasol, who was abandoned despite being owned by Qualcomm out of all companies (HIGHLY unlikely to be scared by a patent troll, considering Qualcomm could be arguably described as a patent troll themselves). It's simply ridiculous to think that eInk would torpedo their own technology out of incompetence/malice/whatever yet these ideas keep being parroted here without _any evidence whatsoever_ as if it was gospel from the gods. The real reason, of course, is that this technology is hard (plain physics), and that there's little investment because most consumers could not care less. The supposed advantages of eink are paper-thin at best (contrast sucks and keeps getting _worse_ after each generation, and that is without taking into account the color ones), customers have a hard time distinguishing it from other technologies such as reflective/memory LCDs (which practically beat them in every metric you can think of, even power usage -- except for long enough periods of idleness which are not of interest to any consumer), and at the end of the day most people will choose a backlighted LCD over all these alternatives anyway... See Garmin, which started with reflective LCD watches for outdoor usage, and the moment they experimented with a plain old fugly backlighted LCD they decided to replace most of their series, _even the ones for primarily outdoor usage_, with backlighted LCDs (e.g. Fenix 8). Customers just buy shiny flashy screens more, what can you do about that? eInk survives because they're actually one of the cheaper techs, which is the only reason talking about "billboards" is even remotely plausible, and even then they're having a hard time.
- deleted 2y ago
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- gamblor956 2y ago
  There's a lot wrong in this comment. Eink B&W screen contrast has been improving dramatically with every generation, but there was a significant backward step in the jump to color eink screens (due to how the current Kaleido technology works). The Gallery technology does not suffer this lack of contrast, but the trade-off is that screen refresh times are slower than 1st generation e-ink panels. Garmin still uses reflective LCDs, even on the Fenix 8. The AMOLED is a separate SKU. Eink is superior to transflective LCDs in terms of power use as it only needs to be refreshed when content changes; an LCD must be refreshed multiple times per second. Only bistable LCDs can display an image without power but this comes at the cost of resolution and contrast.
  - AshamedCaptain 2y ago
    > Eink B&W screen contrast has been improving dramatically with every generation, No: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2021/01/20/contrast-on-e-ink-devices-is-getting-worse-instead-of-better/ https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2021/01/20/contrast-on-e-i... Ever since Carta it has been stuck at 15:1 and it is trivial to see that e.g. Remarkable has better contrast than the newer (B&W) Kobos. As I said, this has _nothing_ to do with the color screens where the contrast is even further reduced, _even_ in Gallery (by eink's own specsheet, as well as by plain observation on a newer remarkable color). > Garmin still uses reflective LCDs, even on the Fenix 8. The AMOLED is a separate SKU. No. The _reflective LCD_ one is the one which has become the different SKU (it is now called the 'solar'; the main series now all use backlight), and guess which new SKU is neither stocked nor displayed on stores. It used to be that "Epix" was the AMOLED version of the Fenix, but now it has replaced the mainstream Fenix. As a fan of the reflective LCD garmin watches (since the 1st generation Fenix), the writing is on the wall. > Eink is superior to transflective LCDs in terms of power use as it only needs to be refreshed when content changes; an LCD must be refreshed multiple times per second. However eInk requires _significantly more_ power when refreshing than an LCD, not to mention a more complex controller, while at the same time the power required for refresh by a memory LCD is practically negligible. So, as I said, unless your usecase involves the eink panel staying static for _days at a time_, LCD will win. And no customer really wants a screen that is only refresh once every week; it defies the point of a screen. I could even say the same of a "dynamic" billboard. There's a reason even price stickers at shops use LCDs. Is there nowadays at least some eink watch that can surpass the battery life of the reflective LCD Garmin watches? (measured in months even with at least one screen refresh per minute). Note that many "eink" smartwatches actually use memory LCD, and not a eink panel, behind the scenes. (e.g. Pebble). Furthering my "users cannot even distinguish eink from reflective LCD" argument.
grishka 2y ago
Shouldn't the first of those patents start expiring soon?

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AshamedCaptain 2y ago

Why is this _always_ repeated? Where are these patents? Where are the examples of eInk going against their competition??? Because you have a _myriad_ eink-like technologies from many other companies, most of them literally better than eink, that were available but were abandoned after they failed in the market. One example I particularly liked is Mirasol, who was abandoned despite being owned by Qualcomm out of all companies (HIGHLY unlikely to be scared by a patent troll, considering Qualcomm could be arguably described as a patent troll themselves). It's simply ridiculous to think that eInk would torpedo their own technology out of incompetence/malice/whatever yet these ideas keep being parroted here without _any evidence whatsoever_ as if it was gospel from the gods. The real reason, of course, is that this technology is hard (plain physics), and that there's little investment because most consumers could not care less. The supposed advantages of eink are paper-thin at best (contrast sucks and keeps getting _worse_ after each generation, and that is without taking into account the color ones), customers have a hard time distinguishing it from other technologies such as reflective/memory LCDs (which practically beat them in every metric you can think of, even power usage -- except for long enough periods of idleness which are not of interest to any consumer), and at the end of the day most people will choose a backlighted LCD over all these alternatives anyway... See Garmin, which started with reflective LCD watches for outdoor usage, and the moment they experimented with a plain old fugly backlighted LCD they decided to replace most of their series, _even the ones for primarily outdoor usage_, with backlighted LCDs (e.g. Fenix 8). Customers just buy shiny flashy screens more, what can you do about that? eInk survives because they're actually one of the cheaper techs, which is the only reason talking about "billboards" is even remotely plausible, and even then they're having a hard time.

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gamblor956 2y ago
There's a lot wrong in this comment. Eink B&W screen contrast has been improving dramatically with every generation, but there was a significant backward step in the jump to color eink screens (due to how the current Kaleido technology works). The Gallery technology does not suffer this lack of contrast, but the trade-off is that screen refresh times are slower than 1st generation e-ink panels. Garmin still uses reflective LCDs, even on the Fenix 8. The AMOLED is a separate SKU. Eink is superior to transflective LCDs in terms of power use as it only needs to be refreshed when content changes; an LCD must be refreshed multiple times per second. Only bistable LCDs can display an image without power but this comes at the cost of resolution and contrast.
- AshamedCaptain 2y ago
  > Eink B&W screen contrast has been improving dramatically with every generation, No: https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2021/01/20/contrast-on-e-ink-devices-is-getting-worse-instead-of-better/ https://blog.the-ebook-reader.com/2021/01/20/contrast-on-e-i... Ever since Carta it has been stuck at 15:1 and it is trivial to see that e.g. Remarkable has better contrast than the newer (B&W) Kobos. As I said, this has _nothing_ to do with the color screens where the contrast is even further reduced, _even_ in Gallery (by eink's own specsheet, as well as by plain observation on a newer remarkable color). > Garmin still uses reflective LCDs, even on the Fenix 8. The AMOLED is a separate SKU. No. The _reflective LCD_ one is the one which has become the different SKU (it is now called the 'solar'; the main series now all use backlight), and guess which new SKU is neither stocked nor displayed on stores. It used to be that "Epix" was the AMOLED version of the Fenix, but now it has replaced the mainstream Fenix. As a fan of the reflective LCD garmin watches (since the 1st generation Fenix), the writing is on the wall. > Eink is superior to transflective LCDs in terms of power use as it only needs to be refreshed when content changes; an LCD must be refreshed multiple times per second. However eInk requires _significantly more_ power when refreshing than an LCD, not to mention a more complex controller, while at the same time the power required for refresh by a memory LCD is practically negligible. So, as I said, unless your usecase involves the eink panel staying static for _days at a time_, LCD will win. And no customer really wants a screen that is only refresh once every week; it defies the point of a screen. I could even say the same of a "dynamic" billboard. There's a reason even price stickers at shops use LCDs. Is there nowadays at least some eink watch that can surpass the battery life of the reflective LCD Garmin watches? (measured in months even with at least one screen refresh per minute). Note that many "eink" smartwatches actually use memory LCD, and not a eink panel, behind the scenes. (e.g. Pebble). Furthering my "users cannot even distinguish eink from reflective LCD" argument.

grishka 2y ago

Shouldn't the first of those patents start expiring soon?