12 ms·
E-Ink Android phone promises a week long battery life
- mtgx 14y agoIt could be useful in India or African countries with not much access to energy. But I doubt people from developed nations would want this. It most likely offers nowhere near the experience of an LCD device. Remember, besides the lack of color issue, e-ink devices work best when the on-screen image is static, and not changing often.
- liljimmytables 14y agoPersonally I've been waiting for this device for years. My primary phone usage is reading and composing email, making calls, and listening to music. I also use a Nook Touch to store reading material for reference and entertainment. This new device resolves the two devices into one- what's not to like? If I need internet or video, there are tablets available that provide this functionality in a much more comfortable form factor. I don't claim to be representative of a large market, but this new device has finally done something that NFC, dual cores, retina, et al have failed to do, which is excite me.
- cleverjake 14y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdXAyvWZdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdXAyvWZdI
- fmstephe 14y agoThis is very exciting to me. I very strongly desire an E-Ink display to work on. I find the LCD displays are a horror on my eyes after a full day at work and hacking in the evening. I don't want to watch videos but a terminal colour that refreshes as fast as I type would be fantastic. I plan on buying one of these at the earliest opportunity.
- bitcartel 14y agoWith Lynx ported over, it could be a fun text only browsing device.
- netcan 14y agoMaybe, but maybe not. If done well it could be an excellent travel phone. Personally, I like the idea. Battery life is very important for a lot of people, especially when travelling. It would fantastic for reading on. It might be very light. Attractive travel phone. If you think about it a minute, a lot of apps might be just as good with a simple, e-ink friendly UIs: exercise apps, audio players, chess, stop watch, contacts, weather, expensify, sms, skype, whatsapp, calendar, newspapers, bus schedule. In fact, most apps either present information that you read (like magazines or calendars) or the important part is not in the UI (like music players). Some stuff would suck or break, like web browsers, maps and video (obviously) but not as much as my initial guess was. The biggest problem I see is that to be e-ink friendly the phone would need to have the UI & apps modified specifically for it, so without a big market it won't work.
- buro9 14y agoI go on cycle tours every now and then, camping some of the time. I'd love a backup phone for use during tours that could hold a usable charge for 4 or 5 days. My father does motorcycle touring and would love the same. I have an old Sony Ericsson M600i symbian phone ( http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_m600-1425.php http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_m600-1425.php ) I dig out for when I go travelling. The battery is still good for 10 days stand-by. It's such a pain to resync contacts, mail, etc... that all I really do is move the SIM over and use a travel email account. If I could have the battery life of the old phone with the functionality of a new smart phone, then I'm very willing to sacrifice the screen quality to achieve it.
- Adirael 14y agoI have a 12V plug on my motorcycle (fused, regulated. I installed it for like 10 bucks). I also have a couple of solar chargers, they hold 2 AA batteries. They take about 8 hours of sunlight to fully charge and can put an iPhone into the 70% range.
- stickfigure 14y agoWhen there's sunlight, you want to be out riding, not sitting around waiting for your phone to charge! And plugging/unplugging the phone every time you get on/off the bike is annoying. First-world problems :-)
- ZoFreX 14y agoIt's the rest of the functionality of a smartphone that drains it sadly, not just the screen. If I turn off 3G and wifi on my SGS2, the battery life goes from around half a day to almost a week!
- bduerst 14y agoI can confirm this - with my Galaxy Nexus, if I don't turn off the data reception before bed, the phone won't make it through the night.
- Nursie 14y agoIt's not a video consumption device, no. Doesn't mean it can't be a great device for web surfing, listening to music and reading on, as well as a phone that lasts a week. If the colour aspect gets fixed I'd be tempted.
- netcan 14y agoWeb surfing on an e-ink isn't fun. It's not an inherent problem (ie, you could have an optimized site that worked fine) but sites on the web now have scrolling and moving parts. On phone size screens you also have zooming. With e-ink you want to move cleanly between static screens.
- curiousdannii 14y agoThe browser on my Kindle Touch has multi-touch zooming. Works great!
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoThis is a controller-chip issue, not intrinsic to the display technology. http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/05/i-wish-my-nooks-e-ink-display-was-this-smooth/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/05/i-wish-my-nooks-e-ink-disp... E-Ink was done a great dis-service by the scanning-refresh chips that came out with the display. Simultaneous-refresh is how any reasonable display device does it.
- snogglethorpe 14y agoWow...! So... the entire perception of e-ink as being slow/flaky is because of the controller chip used to drive it?! That's ... man.... Are the faster electronics too power-hungry to use in a device like an e-book that's very focused on extremely long battery life?
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoYeah; what we have is smaller electronics, fewer data paths, slower technology and probably uses quite a bit less power. Power consumption is proportional to update rate too.
- mtrimpe 14y agoIf this were a 10" 3G color eInk table instead it would be perfect for browsing, emailing and terminal based programming on the go. I would absolutely love such a device...
- mistercow 14y ago>It most likely offers nowhere near the experience of an LCD device. But "nowhere near" doesn't have to mean inferior. For people who would rather read than play games or watch videos, this will be superior to an LCD phone as a time passing device. If you communicate mostly by email and text message, it will even be superior as a phone.
- Supreme 14y agoI had a knee-jerk reaction to this: >It could be useful in India or African countries with not much access to energy. It's appalling that countries located in regions where the sun tends to beat down most of the time lack energy at all.
- dfxm12 14y agoIs "week long battery life" really a killer feature? As long as a phone has enough battery to make it through the 16 hours per day most of us are awake, anything more is just gold plating. Just how big is the "week long battery life" niche?
- peterwiese 14y agoIt's huge. If I were Samsung or Motorola I'd manufacture a phone that is a) beautiful b) incredibly thin, light-weight and simplistic c) has a week battery life d) is absolutely feature-reduced. It'd have no app ecosystem or anything alike. It's capabilities would be reduced to a) phone calls b) SMS c) email (no attachments; maybe even no HTML) d) Facebook messenger. It'd have no browser. Design-wise I'd make it almost as thin as a credit card and a screen 2/3 the size of the iPhone 4. A black and white screen would actually be perfect, even if that'd be an artificial limitation. I'd call it: THE PHONE. Nothing more. I know many people that'd buy this device. You could even do something like RIM and offer worldwide email/messaging service.
- aw3c2 14y agoMost phones should run for a week with no issues if rarely used. This (I guess, the site not loading) promises a week of active usage. It is useless as "normal" smartphone though because e-ink has a lot of latency and a low refresh rate. edit: peterwiese, you have been ghosted for 2 months or so :(
- stinos 14y agofor me this is a feature: not having to think about or doing the effort of putting the phone in the charger every single day? I'll sign for that. (it's also marginally cheaper since you don't waste elektricity if using the charger only once a week vs every day. And it makes it useful in countries not having power everywhere)
- hollerith 14y ago>t's also marginally cheaper since you don't waste elektricity if using the charger only once a week vs every day I read recently that recharging an iPad every night costs less than 2 cents per year.
- jasongullickson 14y agoI'd replace my Droid RAZR with one of these in a heartbeat...
- pepijndevos 14y agoIf it has USB OTG and allows installing custom Linux software, I'm sold. Current status: [USB Host on the Kindle 4](http://www.christian-hoff.com/?p=139 http://www.christian-hoff.com/?p=139)
- Zigurd 14y agoThe difficult part of making an e-ink Android, or applying an e-ink display to a general-purpose platform is that the way screen-drawing is implemented has not been designed with e-ink in mind. The display might either seem "flashy" because the full screen is blanked and drawn for every update, or the screen gets "muddy" because the graphics stack isn't keeping track of how many times a screen areas has been rewritten without being reset. Page-at-a-time updates, like those between pages of a book, are the most compatible with how e-ink works.
- Zigurd 14y agoWait, it gets worse: once you have basic updating working, you face having to modify a lot of UI widgets that, for example, use smooth-scrolling, which would muddy-up an e-ink display. You could start by nerfing a lot of animations in Android, but I'd bet you would still encounter implementations that are not as clean as to use up-to-date animation implementations. You would have to size the job by looking at every standard widget's implementation and factoring out the parts of that implementation that are hostile toward e-ink. After all the widgets are clean for e-ink, you then have to take a look at some user interactions: Dragging a "thumb" to scroll through a list might be quite tough to do well no matter how it is implemented.
- Groxx 14y agoI've got a rooted Nook ("simple touch"), it handles the redrawing remarkably well. I wouldn't call it production-ready, but the shadowing is small and it's more than usable. Available RAM is abysmal, but that's a separate problem. The weirder part is how e.g. dragging an icon makes a greyscale-rainbow trail behind it as it redraws pixels. Panning through the app screens is also pretty crappy, and all the little animations are so over the top with a slow screen rate that the results are basically laughable. I wish there were a "never animate anything, ever, for any reason" switch I could flip :|
- lifeformed 14y agoI dream of one day when someone will make a minimalist phone that meets my needs. The perfect phone for me would be this: - Can make and receive calls and texts. - Has a phone book (just a name/number key-value pair). - Has a clock and timer/alarm. - NO OTHER SOFTWARE FEATURES. Nothing extra other than calls, texts, phone book, time. - Small e-ink display. - Simple T9 keypad. - Rugged construction, should be able to take a lot of abuse. Should not feel cheap. - Small and thin. - Tons of battery life. - Beautiful, minimalist visual design. - Cheap enough that you can lose it without feeling bad. That's all I want - something optimized for calls and texts, nothing more or less. It would be a cheap phone to produce, I think. Would there be any market for this? EDIT: the Motofone looks like it's kind of like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone), but it has a segmented display (bad for texts), and it sounds like it feels a bit cheap. It could also be prettier.
- tadfisher 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone EDIT: I see you beat me to the punch.
- listic 14y agoI would be happy even without the "cheap". I would really love it though if they made an open (in the sense of iOS/Android at least) operating system for such phones (yes, monochrome and with CPUs in single digit MHz probably) It would allow for third-party applications (or, at a pinch, I could write one myself) that no phone or watch manufacturer ever makes right. Like UI customization for texts or alarm clock that makes sense for polyphasic sleep. But this, I'm afraid is a thing that will never be made: all innovation seems to be in the segment of touch-screen slate phones nowadays.
- borplk 14y agoI have been thinking about a responsive e-ink for some time. What I would love is a responsive e-ink screen to use for text editing, Imagine a large responsive e-ink screen that you can use for coding, reading, etc... Although for coding it would also need some basic colours.
- fsiefken 14y agoYes, responsive e-ink has already been achieved with Vizplex technology as displayed in PocketBook linux based e-readers.
- Lexarius 14y agoColor would be great, though I think monochrome syntax highlighting would be a fair compromise for a first generation device. Bold for keywords, italic for comments or maybe strings. Maybe a few extra monospace fonts if you need more than that. Where's the kickstarter for this I can throw money at?
- borplk 14y agoYeah that's a good idea. The main problem with e-ink is the response time. The current screens are not responsive enough for typing.
- 4ad 14y agoYes they are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdXAyvWZdI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPdXAyvWZdI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxwceUvxlCo The problem with existing e-readers is with the poor programming of the display controller, not with the display itself.
- agumonkey 14y agoOn non-ascii editors we could benefit from fancier typography, like borders (rounded, angle, padded, etc), to distinguish between types.
- columbo 14y ago
- dagw 14y agoThis could become an awesome secondary travel/camping phone. Sure when I'm home I generally remember to charge my phone every or every other night, but when out and about there are many times when charging is inconvenient of impossible.
- efuquen 14y agoYou have a phone which you can charge every "other" night and still be running? In my experience the Driod Razr Maxx is the only modern smartphone you can really do that with.
- dagw 14y agoI have an Acre Liquid somethingorother I picked up for $200 or so when my phone died last spring. It's been 14 hours since I took it off charging, and in that time I've made a few phone calls, listened to a couple of hours of mp3s, read a dozen web sites or so, checked my email a couple of times and played a simple game for about 15 minutes and my battery is at 63%.
- regomodo 14y agoFor camping surely an old nokia will do? I keep one, which isn't much bigger than a mars bar, for this purpose and the battery lasts for ages.
- dagw 14y agoSure, I do the same. But having smart phone features like e-mail and a web browser would no doubt be handy at times. For example looking up bus/train schedules for getting home in case you end up delayed or have to change your route.
- rtcoms 14y agoI wish for a dual screen mobile (one side LCD and other side E-Ink)
- goatforce5 14y agoCan one or the other be (more or less) completely transparent? Is it possible to have one screen layered over the other such that the LCD only becomes active when the user is directly interacting with the device? (Off to the patent office I go!)
- beagle3 14y agoTake an OLPC with you to help you with the filing. It had those in 2008 (or even earlier). Google "Pixel Qi"
- dmritard96 14y agoI have been wanting this for a while and I still can't figure out why no one has released one. In my mind, my cell phone (or tablet) should be an all in one device - which to a large degree is becoming the case. I hated having a stand alone MP3 player, GPS receiver and camera. Now that e-readers (and wannabe e-readers - kindle fire, ipad, etc.) are becoming mainstream, I don't want my next phone (first tablet) to be without a low power screen. I am a bit disappointed in the average consumer though - it seems like they have a hard time understanding the advantages of e-ink screens or they are ok with reading on an ipad/kindle fire as it can do more than a basic e-reader. If executed well, it could be a major product enhancement and give a mobile device make an edge for a while, esp. considering it would be cheap to add - the screen and the minimal amount of hardware to interface that with the rest of the phone.
- JVIDEL 14y agoNot bad at all, but then again a IMOD display would be better: its in color and it has much faster refresh rates so it can play video and use touch UIs just like in any LCD. It has some downsides compared to regular screens but it looks even better than eInk and has similar advantages like low energy use.
- Grunnt 14y agoMy 30 euro simple Nokia phone has a week long battery life, and I'm pretty sure the user experience it offers will be a lot better than an e-ink Android phone.
- aidenn0 14y agoI have a crazy idea, how about a touch LCD phone that is: 1) actually small enough to fit in my pocket 2) Not PoS 3 years out-of-date hardware designed so that the phone company can offer a "free" smartphone. The smaller screen would probably greatly improve battery life.
- hahainternet 14y agoEverywhere outside of North America, this is common.
- Wohlf 14y agoHands down, my favorite phone ever was a 5000 yen prepaid Japanese cell phone with free in network video chat from 2008.
- batiudrami 14y agoLike, the iPhone? Or maybe a Lumia 800? They both fit comfortably in all mens' pockets (and most women's, assuming they have pockets). The problem is Android is such a power hungry OS that you need to be constantly updating the specs as hardware and app demands grow higher, and high-end specs require space to fit everything in (including ever-growing battery demands), so small Android handsets have to make compromises on specs. It feels sort of like PCs did 10 years ago - 3 years of use and your top-of-the-line PC was near unusable. I find Windows Phone and iOS don't suffer from this nearly as much.
- ps258 14y agoIt isn't android. It's the manufacturer skins. AOSP Jellybean runs really smooth on my low end phone. (512 MB ram, 600 MHz processor) But HTC Sense 4 runs like crap.
- batiudrami 14y agoIt's a bit of both. The original Galaxy S (which was only a year and a half old at the time, and was a top-of-the-line phone) struggled really hard with stock android ICS for me.
- goombastic 14y agoWould be useful to have as a second screen. Dual touch maybe? eink for phone functions (60% of the time in my case) and lcd for when you need the fullcolor display (GPS mode, movie mode, web browsing)?
- dfrey 14y agoe-ink isn't suitable for anything that moves, so it's only going to be good for a really basic phone + contacts + text messaging device. Android seems like massive overkill and a waste of battery for those relatively simple tasks. I think there is still demand for a high quality phone that is light on features and inexpensive.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoOverkill, yes. However, it's probably also cheaper than going with anything else. It might have cost them $1 more in hardware to go with 512MB of RAM rather than 256MB but they probably saved $10 in licensing fees. Yes, 99% of Android apps will be useless, but 1% of a very large number is still a large number. As for battery, virtually all of it goes into the display and the radio. The CPU is sleeping most of the time, so the OS chosen would have very little impact on that. "I think there is still demand for a high quality phone that is light on features and inexpensive." Sorry, not going to happen. In a modern phone, features are a lot cheaper to add than quality.
- raphman 14y agoFor what it's worth: Onyx, the manufacturer, only half-heartedly support their current e-ink readers, leaving lots of annoying bugs unfixed. However, there are very concrete rumors that Android is also being ported to the some Onyx e-ink readers [1]. [1] http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2237483&postcount=23 http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2237483&...
- hayksaakian 14y agoI'd take a black and white screen with the promise of better battery life if the display was at least as functional in all other aspects
- dutchbrit 14y agoI wouldn't buy it, due to not really being able to see photos on an e-ink display. I've just become so use to color. Great idea though, especially for people that travel a lot, go camping etc... It doesn't seem that snappy right now speed wise. Not sure if thats the phone or Android though (I'm not a big Android user), but nonetheless, cool stuff.