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Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

The Kindle and it's e-reader kin are pretty successful?

I think the problem is that a device with an e-ink display is necessarily single purpose. General purpose devices can't use e-ink, they need to support video playback and browsers with full colour.

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I'd love an e-ink dashboard in my car so it's not so glary, e-ink tablet that does a bit more than a Kindle but isn't a full media player (super thin super light with basic browser for wiki, news, rss, and email), ~20" e-ink screen on the inside of my apartment door with calendar and notifications and todolist, there's so many cool things we could do with the tech if we could produce it cheaper and bigger. Not everything needs to be able to play video.

I'd really love that too! And if it was for color, I would really appreaciate a photoframe as I just think a backlight is not needed for these things and is just annoying at night. I really do not care about video, most relevant content is pretty static and does not even require the already possible 4-5 changes per second.

Have you seen reMarkable? Doesn't seem to have a browser from what I can see but more capable than a kindle.

https://remarkable.com/

I got mine a few weeks ago. It's true there's no browser but the note-taking capabilities are great. It's running Linux so I can only assuming it's a matter of time before someone starts releasing some custom updates.

I was looking into this a while back. Would love to hear more reviews on it. The ability to write notes with a pen is the one feature I wish my Kindle had. The Kindle is a great device for reading, bookmarking & highlighting but you can't write in the margins... When I first seen this I was hoping the next version of Kindle would try to accomplish this for the holiday season but unfortunately they did not.

How does it compare with Sony's e ink tablet with stylus? Seems too similar except it is made by startup

That's the GP's point. Of course the update rate sucks because enough research hasn't been put into it.

There are already E-Ink displays with much a faster update rate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsY3T1uzjAI

Who knows how much faster this could get with enough investment? Unless there's some fundamental physical limitation to the update rate that I'm not aware of.

Ha that video is not a fast update rate. It's just only updating a small bit of the screen at a time so you can't really see the slowness. Modern kindles are pretty fast but not video speed, and they still have to blank the screen after a few updates.

Yes, obviously I'm not going to be linking to a video showing a technology that doesn't exist yet.

The video serves to demonstrate that given some technological development the entire screen could be like that, and aside from that there are E-Ink screens in common use that can't refresh even such a small area that fast.

A technical video about eink, reprogramming the firmware etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw

It's unfortunate that so much of this specific content is locked up as video. The part is $35 shipped on AliExpress, a great way to begin experimenting.

Unedited video is the fastest kind of content to produce, and the slowest to consume.

Edited video is the slowest kind of content to produce.

Unfortunately for me even edited video is still tougher to consume than the written word, when it comes to technical content.

I have a much easier time digesting information at my own pace.

I prefer this video, showing someone playing Wipeout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH0wAmMbFgI#t=1m37s

Imagine a table with an e-ink display that can show you whatever you want them to show you.

Imagine reading news above your sink while doing the dishes.

Imagine the entire walls constructed with e-ink displays in your home and being able to change the wallpapers in your living room depending on what's currently in your mind.

All of those could have a "read-only" mode until you push a button, they would use pretty much no electricity, and would ideally be water-proof.

Instead, what I have right now, is an e-book reader. Which is nice and all. I'm often sending articles to my Kindle (kudos https://p2k.co/) and all sorts of things, but I had much higher hopes from e-ink technology (and still kind of do). The hope of having my home filled with e-ink displays is much greater than having a home filled with sensors.

E-ink isn't good enough for any of those yet.

I don't know how much research is ongoing into it, and I do think it's underutilized (I can't understand why smart watches use LCDs), but there are many breakthroughs before we can get those things you mention.

I still expect it to get all over the world, eventually.

> I can't understand why smart watches use LCDs

Refresh rate. If all a smart watch did was be a watch, it would be sufficient, but there would be no reason for it to exist. Once you want it to do non-watch things, you need a better refresh rate.

Ok, I don't know all that a watch is expected to do because I don't own one. But AFAIK, messages, fitness tracking, and remote controls do not need anything above what some e-paper can get you.

Now (after some time to think) I do think it's mostly a design restriction. Nobody was able to make an e-paper watch look futuristic and expensive.

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