E-Ink Case Turns the Back of Your Phone Into a Second Screen | Hacker News Reader

E-Ink Case Turns the Back of Your Phone Into a Second Screen

wired.com

120 pointsrkudeshi39 comments

As a guy with hands on e-ink experience I have to point out that the actual product will prove to be extremely underwhelming.

Please note that this video is a montage and that there is absolutely no way this kind of performance could be achieved in present day. Also their plans for future (and indeed promises) rests solely on vapourware (think somebody promising a sick mod for Duke Nukem Forever in 2003).

These guys will learn the hard way that setting expectations too high can backfire massively.

To me the disconnect between "demoed" product and actual capabilities of technology are in the same ballpark as enterprise software sales.

Does anyone else have a problem with the obviously unrealistic video? I have never seen an e-ink display running at ~30FPS smoothly.

There are some e-ink screens that can barely support video, but there's usually still heavy ghosting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24srQXX81Oc

I'm willing to let them cheat a bit on the static refresh rate in the demo, but the fact that they're showing animated UI effects like zooms and fades is a little worrisome, unless they have access to next-gen eInk that I don't know about.

Yes, it makes me question the legitimacy of the whole project. In addition to the surprising smoothness, the picture of the bridge is in (washed out) color, although they said color wouldn't be available until 2014. And how is the case drawing power? I would expect there to be a bulge at the base of the case. Also, they showed touch-sensitivity in the video. Is that real?

According to his LinkedIn profile, Gregory Moon is an MD. I couldn't see Yashar Behzadi's LinkedIn profile, but he's listed under "Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing," which is a bit reassuring. Still, I want to see evidence of a real prototype.

They are drawing power from the lightning port (in the FAQ). But you're right - the prototype doesn't show a bulge for that to happen. Nor (as in my other comment) does there seem to be a pass-through port for you to dock or connect a lightning cable.

Regarding the 30FPS, I've seen demos of e-ink running at high refresh rates (don't know what FPS), but was told that the hit on the battery is too high. Hence why the Kindle rarely refreshes.

The article says that they don't have any touch sensitivity -- their app uses the iPhone accelerometer to detect touches. Sounds like a good feature for the app (like as a way to preview what your photos will look like on the e-ink), but it would only work when the app is running, and the indiegogo page doesn't make that clear.

It may be an "e-paper" display, similar to the one Pebble is using. Looking at the Pebble demo videos, you can see that they do support high framerate. Not so sure about the size though.

[1]http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/597507018/pebble-e-paper... [2] http://www.sharpmemorylcd.com/1-26-inch-memory-lcd.html

But memory LCDs ("e-paper") still have 15 uW quiescent power use, whereas the case is marketed as "always on" (zero quiescent power). So, no.

Personally, I would love this and I'll probably reserve one after Christmas.

To make a real splash they'll need to push the price down to $49 IMHO, and teenagers will go wild. Then have an expensive version for the grown-up tablet market, "a Kindle without the Kindle".

If they can push the price down enough, in the long run, this is the future of gadget cases.

Can't wait to see it come to Android--I'd even change into whatever model they support first, as I think this back screen would see far more use from me than my smartphone ever does. Now if only it could support Wacom, and if that wasn't crappy like the Galaxy Note, that'd be my dream phone.

By not crappy, I mean something feeling quite close to writing on paper, such as the old HP TC1100 (can't get rid of mine). I wonder if there's any new tablet that feels as good.

Can e-ink address individual pixels like that? Seems like it should be able to, but the demos you see always involve full screen refreshes.

Newer Kindles no longer need full screen refreshes for every frame, however after a few of these "mini-refreshes" a full screen refresh is needed to eliminate accumulated ghosting.

Yes, you can change individual pixels or sub-full-screen regions. But because the pixels are cells of white titanium-dioxide particles suspended in a liquid, simply writing a new pixel value may leave a few particles floating around.

To correct this, older Kindles and Nooks used to flash the screen all white and then all black before displaying a new page. Later models only do this every few page turns (I think on my Nook Simple Touch it's 6).

They claim to be using a plastic substrate and to be "nearly indestructible" (which makes sense, a glass substrate e-ink would last about a day the way I use a phone).

Is that really available on the market yet? As far as I can tell I can't buy a plastic substrate e-reader today, although it's been predicted to be a few months away for years.

Link to actual project on indiegogo:

http://www.indiegogo.com/popslate

The refresh rates on the demo video are incredible for an e-ink screen. Is that even real? Is this some new generation e-ink screen?

Looks like a mock-up to me. No way that's real.

Especially the animations. It's pretty disingenuous to show this level of smoothness when they almost certainly know it's not going to be possible.

Compare with the Nook Playstation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?fv=mXiiaprv3do

That link seems broken; it works for me by changing fv to just v.

Did you mean: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXiiaprv3do ? ;) Interesting anyway, if it's real. Is there a way to obtain the sourcecode or binaries anywhere?

Looks to me to be FPse [1] running on a rooted NST [2].

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emulator.f...

[2] To root: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1675706 . It's not a simple process, sadly.

It's possible to do video rates on e-ink. Epson make some very good chips like the S1D19120 or S1D13M01. How they've managed this in this form though, I'm not at all sure. Time to do some digging.

Looking at the video I was about to buy one because of how good it looked but yeah you are right. There is no way that can be real for so cheap.

It also refreshed with no ghosting without doing the full black/full white page clear. Either e-ink has come a massive way since I bought my kindle last year or it's a mockup.

The page states they are "working closely" with E-Ink Corp., and even plan to have color versions by 2014, so maybe they're just showing off the most recent tech (which may or may not end up in the actual gadget).

Color E-Ink is notorious vapourware, planned for production since 2010.

Looks awesome, but I wish they showed me photos of the actual case details (side view - does it make the phone much thicker, and bottom view with charger)

I'm not seeing details on whether the Lightning port is still available for docking & data. The 'specs' say that it uses the lightning port for power, but not if you can still plug in your own device.

I don't think you can because of this (from the site FAQ): How do I charge my phone with popSLATE?

There is a micro-USB charging port on your popSLATE that passes charge through to your phone so you don't have to take the cover off.

> There is a micro-USB charging port on your popSLATE that passes charge through to your phone so you don't have to take the cover off.

Almost as appealing as the screen is that I could charge my phone with any Micro USB cord, instead of these $20 Lightning cables.

About two years ago I wrongly guessed that the iPhone 5 would have e-Ink on the back, because the iPhone 4 had glass on both sides, hinting that the back would eventually become a display, too. Glad someone is doing this, cool stuff if it works! ;)

I'd rather use the back and sides as a "smart" chording-keyboard -- make the entire surface pressure sensitive with a decent enough resolution to map each finger and then automagically assign the right key to each finger based on the location and total number of all detected fingers.

I'm wondering whether it is going to be possible to use this for reading. Because right now in the video it looks more like a screensaving feature with the pictures.

Reminds me of Geode that used a similar screen in an iPhone cade as a "virtual payment card". I think it might be more suitable for a vanity product like this.

I'm still wanting for the hybrid LCD - eInk display.

But how would that work, exactly? Neither can be made transparent to the other, in their current incarnation.

Seems likely to me that we'll have fast refresh, color e-ink displays before it becomes possible to meld them with LEDs.

Darn, I had this idea like 5 years ago. Oh well, at least now it's real and I didn't have to make it myself.

You had 5 years :)

This is one of those ideas that you wish someone executed but don't want to dedicate whole 2--5 years to it yourself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com