E-ink Screen

[Kiga]

Wouldn't a super fast refreshing e-reader screen sort of negate it's point of being energy efficient? I'm not sure about a touch screen ereader screen on the front, again my main concern is how easy it would be to break. But, I would certainly be willing to pay 100 dollars more for it, if it were implemented in a way that would not make the device more prone to breaking. For example, if I dropped my pandora and it fell on the screen, what could we expect to happen? Would the screen be messed up?

E-ink screen a very rugged, watch that video at 22:41

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajqiG_4tLcc#t=1361

 

[God Ginrai]

Wouldn't a super fast refreshing e-reader screen sort of negate it's point of being energy efficient?

It does use more energy than a normal e-ink screen, but I believe it still uses less than LCD. But anyways, it would be easy to toggle fast-refresh so that you only need to use it for tasks that need it. (web browsing) That's how Onyx did it, too. They had a fast-refresh "mode" that you could toggle.

I'm not sure about a touch screen ereader screen on the front, again my main concern is how easy it would be to break. But, I would certainly be willing to pay 100 dollars more for it, if it were implemented in a way that would not make the device more prone to breaking. For example, if I dropped my pandora and it fell on the screen, what could we expect to happen? Would the screen be messed up?

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, E-ink screens are quite rugged. Here's the part of the post that is relevant:

- And after watching the specific part of the video you linked to: blunt/stumped force resistance is nice, but what about force that is more concentrated on one point (like keeping it in a bag with other things, falling onto something) ?.

e-ink has a page about the ruggedness of their displays. While it doesn't really explain much on its own, it does have a video on the top of the page that is rather enlightening. The person in the video tries to see what happens when he bends the screen, takes a knife to it, burns it, and even drills into it with a power drill. It performed admirably better than an LCD would under the same circumstances. The knife wasn't really able to do anything to the display, and the first hole made with the power drill stopped part of the display, but the second 2 didn't effect it at all, even the parts they were drilled through.

Sadly this wasn't a youtube video, so I couldn't just embed the video here. Here's the link to the page that has the video on it: http://www.eink.com/rugged.html

I would suggest watching the video I mention in the quote. The person utterly abuses the E-ink screen and there are very good results.

-God Ginrai

 

[Drammurt]

Rugged: Look at 24:15 in the video and notice the amount of scratches when the screen is at an angle. In general you should be really sceptical when watching those promo's from manufacturers. If it isn't scratch-resistant enough, you still need protection for your screen, especially for a Pyra that you'd put in your pocket.

Refresh Rate: I've looked on youtube but only found the regular 1-2 fps video's with Angry Birds. Could you provide a video of a commercially available e-ink device running a game? The low refreshrate and ghosting have always been the biggest disadvantages of e-ink, but for static images they are irrelevant. You should ask yourself why the new Yotaphone has a low refresh rate and suffers (most likely) badly from ghosting without the black/white-refresh, but still has a pricetag of $675. 

 

[God Ginrai]

Rugged: Look at 24:15 in the video and notice the amount of scratches when the screen is at an angle. In general you should be really sceptical when watching those promo's from manufacturers. If it isn't scratch-resistant enough, you still need protection for your screen, especially for a Pyra that you'd put in your pocket.

 The video I told you about is only ~5-6 minutes long, there is no 24:15.

Refresh Rate: I've looked on youtube but only found the regular 1-2 fps video's with Angry Birds. Could you provide a video of a commercially available e-ink device running a game? The low refreshrate and ghosting have always been the biggest disadvantages of e-ink, but for static images they are irrelevant. You should ask yourself why the new Yotaphone has a low refresh rate and suffers (most likely) badly from ghosting without the black/white-refresh, but still has a pricetag of $675.

Check this video out at ~7:20

https://www.youtube.com/embed/L6JsCXPiDJU?feature=oembed
-God Ginrai

 

[Eight Bit]

impressive refresh rate there...

I was wondering; How would the Pyra drive such a screen in combination with the main screen and hdmi hardware wise?

Would it need a video output from the soc? If I remember well my Pandora hasn´t got a high res video out because that certain output was used for the main screen. I wouldn´t want to have to choose  between hdmi out or e-ink

 

[Drammurt]

Rugged: I talked about 24:15 in the video that Kiga mentioned on top of this page. Again, if it is so rugged, why do would manufacturers put Gorilla Glass in front of it? It's probably not scratch resistant at all.

Refresh Rate. In that video you've posted, Angry Birds runs at a (for E-Ink) great speed, but again this is a presentation of a prototype. At 06:40 you see how a "normal" E-Ink display runs Angry Birds: shaky and flickering. Then, while the guy who's interviewing is talking about other things, she picks another e-reader to show the special mode. And that refresh rate is really impressive for E-Ink: no clear ghosting and I guess around 8 fps. But, why did she pick that one e-reader? Why not the e-reader that the interviewer was holding? Was it a specially prepared "overdrive" E-Ink that draws the battery in 10 mins? I'm even more skeptical, because I could not find any other example of the Onyx e-reader with this "special mode". All video's on YouTube did not show any of this special mode. There was not a single review about this Onyx Boox C65 After Glow. Did they show a prototype or special prepared e-ink maybe even an LCD with E-Ink-look?

Finally after discovering this video I've found out what this special mode is: it's called refresh mode A2 and someone at XDA made a NoRefresh-app for the Nook. In this special mode the color depth is switched to 1-bit (black or white) and the screen refresh is skipped. White will be a little darker and black a bit brighter. I think the ghosting is considerably less, because of the contrast between black and white and the lowering of the contrast between the shown black and white. Any way, this special mode will set you back to black and white pixels and as you can see in the sample video, the results for animations are not impressive at all if you compare it to an LCD. 

As far as connectivity goes: the OMAP 5432 is advertised as "up to 3 displays + HDMI 1.4a", so it should not be a problem. I still think it's too expensive and too much work to integrate into the Pyra.

 

[God Ginrai]

impressive refresh rate there...

I was wondering; How would the Pyra drive such a screen in combination with the main screen and hdmi hardware wise?

Would it need a video output from the soc? If I remember well my Pandora hasn´t got a high res video out because that certain output was used for the main screen. I wouldn´t want to have to choose  between hdmi out or e-ink

Well, according to ekianjo, we would actually drive it through GPIO instead of using the video output, so that wouldn't be a problem. Even if we did need to use video output, however, both the OMAP5432 and the AllWinner A80 chips have support for up to 3 video outs. But to my understanding, we won't need that, since we would be using GPIO.

-God Ginrai

 

[God Ginrai]

Rugged: I talked about 24:15 in the video that Kiga mentioned on top of this page. Again, if it is so rugged, why do would manufacturers put Gorilla Glass in front of it? It's probably not scratch resistant at all.

 I don't know many manufacturer's who have put Gorilla Glass in front of their E-ink screens. Most ereaders do not have this. My guess is that they are using the glass to facilitate the capacitive touch layer.

Finally after discovering this video I've found out what this special mode is: it's called refresh mode A2 and someone at XDA made a NoRefresh-app for the Nook. In this special mode the color depth is switched to 1-bit (black or white) and the screen refresh is skipped. White will be a little darker and black a bit brighter. I think the ghosting is considerably less, because of the contrast between black and white and the lowering of the contrast between the shown black and white. Any way, this special mode will set you back to black and white pixels and as you can see in the sample video, the results for animations are not impressive at all if you compare it to an LCD.

Yes, I mentioned already that this was a special mode that we could set it in for tasks that would require animation, such as web browsing. In general, we would not need this mode.

And of course the results for animations are not going to be as good as LCD. You're not understanding the point. All we need is enough that it doesn't look jarring for scrolling. We're not going to be watching youtube videos with this. The E-ink screen is a screen for reading, not watching; You generally don't need animations for it.

-God Ginrai

 

[thatgui]

I don't know many manufacturer's who have put Gorilla Glass in front of their E-ink screens. Most ereaders do not have this.

Most ereaders don't have their displays exposed like it is on the Yotaphone. It is usually recessed and the manufacturer expects the customers to protect with some kind of bag or cover. Both does not seem very likely for a pocketable clammshell device.

My guess is that they are using the glass to facilitate the capacitive touch layer.

Sounds a little expensive for a touch layer.

 

[God Ginrai]

I don't know many manufacturer's who have put Gorilla Glass in front of their E-ink screens. Most ereaders do not have this.

Most ereaders don't have their displays exposed like it is on the Yotaphone. It is usually recessed and the manufacturer expects the customers to protect with some kind of bag or cover. Both does not seem very likely for a pocketable clammshell device.

Yea, but the recess only protects against piercing damage, not scratches from dropping it.

My guess is that they are using the glass to facilitate the capacitive touch layer.

Sounds a little expensive for a touch layer.

Sounds to me like good sales. Having Gorilla Glass will give the customer a better confidence in the device even if it is not needed.

-God Ginrai

 

[leathco]

I like the idea but my concerns would be...

1.  Cost.  Pyra is already going to be a rather expensive device.  A custom e-ink screen would drive it up even further.

2.  Usability.  I would use it simply for e-books and to have a pretty picture on the lid of my Pyra.  However, the system would need a way to implement usage of the second screen, apps to specifically target the second screen to display books, or images.  Would the screen be something devs would support?

 

[God Ginrai]

I like the idea but my concerns would be...

1.  Cost.  Pyra is already going to be a rather expensive device.  A custom e-ink screen would drive it up even further.

 Yes, but I believe the amount of features it would add would justify the cost increase.

2.  Usability.  I would use it simply for e-books and to have a pretty picture on the lid of my Pyra.  However, the system would need a way to implement usage of the second screen, apps to specifically target the second screen to display books, or images.  Would the screen be something devs would support?

As long as it is a standard feature of the device and not something we were inserting after market through mods, then yes, devs would support it. Especially if it is as simple as writing to a framebuffer. If a developer sees that it would be useful for their application, I'm sure they would use it. I know that the first thing I would do on receiving my Pyra would be looking into porting BakaReader EX to it (or writing something similar to it) so that it can be used with the E-ink screen.

-God Ginrai

 

[thatgui]

Yea, but the recess only protects against piercing damage, not scratches from dropping it.

Can't make any sense of that, the recess protects from "basic" falling damage (= it just falls on a more or less flat surface). But the real point is, that ereaders have another usecase/user in mind: People that take their ereader out of their bag/backpack/whatever, remove the protection they have usually bought seperately, read and if they are finished they reverse the process from the beginning.The Pyras will be: get it out of the pocket/bag/etc. use it, put it back in. So the surface will always be exposed to more "wear" and other objects that reside with them in whatever the customer uses to transport the Pyra in.

One reason why its a clamshell after all, protecting the screen is not of upmost importance as its already covered by the case itself

Sounds to me like good sales. Having Gorilla Glass will give the customer a better confidence in the device even if it is not needed.

But their unique selling point is th eInk display, and they don't activly advertise that the display is covered with gorilla glass. To me it looks more like they are going the "safe" route and provide additional protection for the display.

 

[_wb_]

Just to illustrate my proposal, a quick sketch:

From the side it could look something like this:

(alternatively, it could only go in like that for the e-ink display; the angles can also help to make it easier to open the lid)

 

[Kiga]

I'm not against that, especially if it allow to have a biggest battery.

 

[Granitehead]

A small screen of this kind could replace the status LEDs completely. I think it would probably not be much more expensive than status LEDs, but much more versatile, wouldn't it?

<edit>And it would possibly use less energy, so longer battery life.</edit>

Doesn't answer the question about the second screen in the lid though, but I think that's just a dream. ;-)

 

[Kiga]

Doesn't answer the question about the second screen in the lid though, but I think that's just a dream. ;-)

We can't know till EvilDragon ask to E-ink and oed, but I think 4,3" e-ink on the lid would be around $50.  Even if that price seems to be too high for the whole price, lot of people said they are ready to pay 80€ or more.

 

[_wb_]

A small screen of this kind could replace the status LEDs completely. I think it would probably not be much more expensive than status LEDs, but much more versatile, wouldn't it?


<edit>And it would possibly use less energy, so longer battery life.</edit>


Doesn't answer the question about the second screen in the lid though, but I think that's just a dream. ;-)

I would like to have a big e-ink screen in the lid, but I think it would be too expensive to add to all units, and too tricky to make optional. So realistically, I think we should forget about it -- I don't think it would be a wise decision to add that.

A small low-power screen like I propose would not be that expensive and it could be used for most of the things you would use the e-ink screen for: showing time/date/battery level/whatever status info, showing song titles when playing music, subject lines of incoming mails or incoming messages, etc.

It would not be very suitable for reading books or for internet browsing, for that, a big e-ink screen would be better (although I would still prefer the main screen for internet browsing because it's nice to have color and smooth scrolling).

It could be used for more purposes than an e-ink display on the backside of the lid, because it can be used in conjunction with the rest of the device: you can use the keyboard and the main screen while using the small screen. For the same reason an e-ink display on the back does not replace the status LEDs, it only complements them (more info) and allows them to be visible only with the lid open, but they still have to be somewhere since you want to check status while using the device too.

 

[Granitehead]

An eInk like you propose would be mostly covered by your hands and pointing away from you while the Pyra is being used.

And it wouldn't cover "most" of /my/ uses for the larger screen, as I'd mainly use that for reading longer texts.

Edit: To clarify: I'm still for a small screen replacing the status LEDs, I just think it has less benefits than you make it seem.

 

[WizardStan]

I'm not against that, especially if it allow to have a biggest battery.

I don't think it would. The maximum sizes are pretty much fixed, so that angle would have to come by sloping the top inward, not bringing the bottom outward. If anything, it would make the battery (and the way _wb_ has drawn it, the screen) smaller.