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Sony cuts the price of its 'Digital Paper' and now it's only $1,000
If the only thing keeping you from Sony's electronic paper replacement was the price, you're in luck. According to The eBook Reader, these days anyone can grab the flexible 13.3-inch E Ink display from Sony's online store (previously it was restricted to legal or banking professionals), and the price just recently fell $100. We're still not sure if dropping under the $1,000 barrier is enough to make reading PDFs and signing A4-sized documents is enough to make it worthwhile, but there are probably some folks who will find a use. Sure it doesn't do color, but the display is high res (1,200 x 1,600) and it has a three week battery life. Who needs two Xbox Ones anyway?
Add a battery-saving, E Ink display to your phone for $79
One of the drawbacks inherent with our variety of smart devices is short battery life, but the folks behind the InkCase Plus think they have the solution for perhaps the most-used gadget in your arsenal: your phone. The InkCase Plus hits Kickstarter today, and like its name suggests, it's a folio case for your phone that packs an always-on E Ink display. If this sounds kinda familiar, that's because the company launched something similar last year for the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S II. Now, however, it's available for the Galaxy S5 (or whatever other phone models get at least 500 votes from the pledging community), packs Bluetooth low-energy connectivity and it can act as a modular second screen, with access to apps and notifications. The campaign page promises 18 hours of reading time thanks to the energy-miserly nature of e-paper, and that you can transfer the likes of boarding passes and shopping lists to it too. Sounds pretty handy, yeah?
Baby steps toward better wearables at Computex 2014
Google's latched on to Diane von Fürstenberg as the solution for making Glass fashion-forward, unveiling a collection of frames made by the famed Belgian designer last week. While it remains to be seen whether trendy-colored frames can make a $1,500 wearable more appealing, a few smaller companies here at Computex in Taiwan have some novel ideas that could make you more willing to strap a mini-computer on your face... or your wrist.
E Ink's working on a smartwatch with a full wraparound display
E Ink's perhaps best known for its e-reader displays, such as the Pearl used in Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite, but the company's black-and-white panels can also be found in a variety of smartwatches, from manufacturers such as Archos, Phosphor and Seiko. Most of these are simply traditional wristwatches with small, low-power screens, but an upcoming model could have a much larger curved display that covers the majority of the wearable's footprint, according to company representatives we spoke with at Computex. Such a device would have a panel that stretches from one end to the other, letting you change the entire watch's design just as you would the face on devices available today.
Sony's found the perfect use for its $1,100 Digital Paper: HR forms
In case you were wondering who would splurge for Sony's $1,100 Digital Paper, it looks like the company has found another suitor: movie and television studios' HR departments. Sony has already targeted lawyers with the 13.3-inch E Ink Mobius-toting device, but now it's teaming up with Ease Entertainment to make short work of the hiring process for the motion picture and TV industries. According to the press release, "Digital Paper enables crew members to quickly and easily read, fill out and submit all required paperwork, complete with legal signatures" -- all while using less of the thin white stuff, we'd surmise. Ease's part of the workflow is storing and securing the collected documents from wandering peepers. With all of those NDAs and so forth, the duo is sure to save some trees -- so long as they remember to recharge every three weeks, and the set has a WiFi connection for passing along the signed forms.
Sony's 13-inch 'Digital Paper' is just like paper, except it costs $1,100
Despite years of development, E Ink's displays haven't yet replaced traditional paper everywhere. Sony's trying to change that with this 13.3-inch Digital Paper device intended for legal, educational and business environments and after we got a brief demo last year it's finally ready to go on sale in May. The only downside? Its pricetag, currently set at a cool $1,100. To answer the question of who could possibly afford or want such an expensive piece of paper that displays PDFs and accepts handwriting input, Sony is introducing Digital Paper at the American Bar Association Tech Show (which is apparently a thing) in Chicago. The draw for Digital Paper is that it's very light at 12.6 oz and has a high resolution (1,200 x 1,600) / 16-level grayscale display with touch controls, stylus input and no backlight. That helps out easy reading in the daytime and no need to scroll or zoom around documents like on smaller tablets. Sony also claims a three week battery life with recharging via AC or USB, while documents can be loaded over WiFi and stored on its 4GB of internal memory or an SD card. It's still way out of our price range for note taking, but if Mark Zuckerberg comes knocking with a billion dollar deal in hand, it might be good to have around.
Dual-screen YotaPhone has a second shot at greatness
If you caught our review of the YotaPhone at the end of last year, you'll know we were cautious about recommending it -- in fact, we said it was probably safer to hold out for a second-gen device. Well, here's a surprise: that replacement is already at the prototype stage and it brings some big improvements that could undo many of the criticisms we leveled at the original. Most importantly, the rear E-Ink panel is now fully touch sensitive, which means you'll be able to do a lot more with this phone without ever needing to engage the traditional, power-hungry display on the other side. Calls, texts, emails, browsing, tweeting and more can be handled using the "always-on" 4.7-inch E-Ink display, with the only sacrifice being predictably slower refresh rates.
Archos' Smartwatches don't want to be smartphones-lite
Archos is coming at the burgeoning smartwatch space in a different way. Rather than hedge its bets on a single device offering, it's planning to release a trio of smartwatches for every end of the consumer spectrum. The water-resistant smartwatches in question don't have specific branding attached as of yet -- that will presumably come before launch later this summer -- but they are easily distinguished by screen size and display tech used. Unlike the half-baked, it-can-sorta-do-everything Galaxy Gear, Archos' smartwatch line is hewing more closely to the Pebble route. These Android- and iOS-compatible devices are designed to supplement your smartphone experience, not replace it. And so, users that buy in will have access to notifications (i.e., SMS, emails, text, Twitter, Facebook, etc.), media playback controls and, of course, a clock. What they won't be able to do is snap photos on a low-resolution camera, talk into their wrists or reply to messages.
YotaPhone update lets you read more e-books and documents on its energy-saving E Ink display
Much as we admired the potential of the YotaPhone in our recent review, we just couldn't overlook its lack of support for popular e-reading platforms like Amazon Kindle and Google Books. That problem hasn't been solved just yet, but things are starting to move in the right direction: the dual-display handset has now been made to work with an alternative (and relatively popular) e-reading app called FBReader. This app will let you display and swipe through Word and .rtf documents on the E Ink panel, as well as unencrypted .epub and .mobi e-book formats of the sort that are traded in smaller e-book stores and some shadier, copyright-dodging parts of the web. PDF files should also be supported by the next version of FBReader, which is currently in beta. Meanwhile, Yota Devices tells us that it's "discussing potential collaboration" with Amazon in order to bring about Kindle support, which, if it happens, would be nothing short of a breakthrough.
YotaPhone review: LCD on the front, E Ink on the back, unique all over
We've long pondered the possibility of an e-ink phone. One that offers enough battery life to get us to the end of the day, or maybe even the End of Days, simply by being less reliant on the power-draining frivolity of an LCD or AMOLED panel. What we didn't envision, though, was that the first mass-produced attempt at such an idea would come from a Russian company we'd never heard of, or that it would take the particularly unusual form of the YotaPhone -- a device that does many things differently, not least in having a curved E Ink panel on its rear side. As you're about to see, a lot of these two-faced ideas have potential, but some of them need some work -- a lot of work, in fact -- before they're ready for prime time. And then there's the price tag, which may come as something of a surprise in its own right given the YotaPhone's mid-range specs. It costs €499 in Europe, which equates to around $675 in the US (although the handset isn't currently available there). That means you could actually buy the Yota's two halves separately for a more affordable sum; for example, by getting a Nexus 5 and a Kindle. Nevertheless, the ability to buy the two-in-one YotaPhone is something we didn't have a year ago, and something that isn't offered by any other company, and so it's worth bearing that in mind as we proceed to lay out its many flaws.
E Ink's new Fina display technology promises lighter, thinner e-readers
That Kindle Paperwhite is pretty thin and light already, but future e-readers could be even skinnier thanks to a new screen technology from E Ink known as Fina. The tech uses a super thin glass substrate that'll supposedly result in displays that measure less than 50 percent in both thickness and weight when compared to "an equivalent glass-based TFT." According to a released statement, this makes Fina ideal for large tablets that also need to be lightweight, which is exactly why it was implemented in the PocketBook CAD Reader, a new 13.3-inch device that's also the first to use Fina. The slate has a dual-core 1GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage space and it runs Android 4.0.4. Of course, we wouldn't expect to pick this up at Best Buy any time soon, as it's primarily meant for displaying drawings from Autocad. Indeed, PocketBook even said it's made to be used on construction sites, not by everyday consumers. Still, we wonder if Fina's arrival means we'll see larger format e-readers in the future, especially for all those DX lovers out there. In the meantime, check out the source link below for more details on E Ink's latest innovation.
The once-bright future of color e-paper
It's all too easy to dismiss the optimistic fantasies of yesterday: flying cars and robot servants may have filled the pages of Popular Mechanics in the 1950s, but today we're better grounded in reality, pinning our hopes on more reasonable futures based on technology we've actually developed. Still, even those predictions fall flat sometimes, and it can burn to look back at the track record of a horse we once bet on. For this editor, that stallion was known as color e-paper, a series of dimly hued electronic-paper technologies that teased a future of low-power gadgets with beautiful, sunlight-readable matte displays. Prototypes from half a dozen firms exhibited tantalizing potential for the last half of the 2000s, and then promptly vanished as the decade came to a close. Like many ill-conceived futurist predictions, expectations for this technology gently faded from the consumer hive mind. The legacy of color e-paper may be muted and dim, but its past, at least, is black-and-white: monochrome E Ink set the tone for a decade of reflective, low-power displays. Years before the iPad and other tablets created the so-called third device, sunlight-readable E Ink screens nested into the public consciousness with Amazon's inaugural Kindle. Launched in 2007, it was a blocky, expensive and awkward device that had more potential than practical application, but the visibility of the Amazon brand lifted its stature. Consumers paid attention and the e-reader category was forged.
E Ink's new higher contrast Carta display is the secret behind Amazon's refreshed Kindle Paperwhite
Amazon peppered its second-gen Kindle Paperwhite announce yesterday with the usual marketing fluff: whiter whites and blacker blacks! But, it turns out, those boasts do have some grounding in reality. E Ink has a new screen tech and, surprise surprise, it's the one that's powering the refreshed Paperwhite's improved readability in sunlight and increased contrast. And the company has some numbers to back those claims too, marking this new "formulation" as offering a 50 percent improvement in contrast over older Kindles, and 20 percent boost to whiteness. It's an accurate claim by our estimation, considering we recently had some eyes-on time with the second-gen Paperwhite. Still, it doesn't beat the Kobo Aura HD's screen, but not everything niche can be so nice.
Alcatel unveils 6-inch One Touch Hero smartphone with E Ink and LED cover options
Alcatel's pen-toting One Touch Scribe HD now has a larger counterpart: meet the One Touch Hero. The new Android 4.2 smartphone upgrades to a 6-inch 1080p LCD, and gets a raft of optional cover accessories that augment the giant display. An E Ink cover lets owners read books without using the power-hungry main screen; there's also a wireless charging cover and a MagicFlip cover with LED notifications. Even without those extras, the Hero is overall more powerful than its Scribe HD ancestor. It carries a faster 1.5GHz quad-core processor with 2GB of RAM, a sharper 13-megapixel rear camera, an improved 2-megapixel front shooter and either 8GB or 16GB of expandable storage. Should you be intrigued, the One Touch Hero will be available in October for a "high-end" price. Alcatel will also sell a Bluetooth phone accessory (much like the HTC Mini+), a TV Link video adapter and a pico projector that doubles as a stand. Follow all of our IFA 2013 coverage by heading to our event hub!
Distro Issue 105: The tale of the amazing multi-colored e-paper display
Once upon a time, the possibility of a color e-reader seemed a reality just around the bend. As the sun set on the 2000s, though, prototypes and the potential for multi-hued e-paper devices seemed to disappear. In this issue of our weekly, Sean Buckley examines the events surrounding the once bright future of the tech and why we're still e-reading in black-and-white. As far as reviews go, we offer up our detailed analysis of the TiVo Roamio Pro, OLPC XO Tablet and Motorola Droid Ultra. Eyes-On peeks at Blue Microphone's latest, Weekly Stat examines the broadband build-up and Recommended Reading profiles Marissa Mayer. The weekend is finally here, and there's plenty to peruse, so go on cozy up with a fresh copy via the usual download spots. Distro Issue 105 PDF Distro in the iTunes App Store Distro in the Google Play Store Distro in the Windows Store Distro APK (for sideloading) Like Distro on Facebook Follow Distro on Twitter
Gajah unveils E Ink case for iPhone 5 and Galaxy Note II, out next month for $129
Popslate's much hyped E Ink case still isn't available half a year after it was announced, and now it could be beaten to the punch by an upstart called Gajah. The latter company's InkCase screen cover popped up at Computex 2013 and bears a Kirf-like resemblance to Popslate's nifty creation, which achieved its funding goal on Indiegogo last year. Gajah's iPhone 5 version will carry a 3.5-inch, 360 x 600 E Ink display, Bluetooth 4.0 compatibility and Popslate-identical $99 price tag, while the Galaxy Note II model will sport a 4.3-inch, 600 x 800 screen, BT 2.1 and $129 sticker. The latter model will roll out in China and Malaysia first, followed by the iPhone 5 model and a possible Galaxy S 4 model after that, if sales justify it. Having its crowd-funded idea "borrowed" before it even hits the market is probably a good sign that Popslate is on to something, but we're not sure that they'll be flattered by this imitation.
E Ink and Sonostar pair up for Mobius flexible-display smartwatch, we go hands-on at Computex
Earlier this week, E Ink announced its Mobius flexible display, a 1.73-inch touch-enabled panel for smartwatches. Now, the new screen has made its way onto the Computex exhibition floor in Taipei. Sonostar, a local manufacturer, has integrated the 320 x 240 grayscale panel within its new wearable, which the company is demonstrating for show attendees. Simply called "Smartwatch," the product is little more than a mockup at this point, but it is expected to hit production sometime in Q3 of this year. The two samples on hand were non-functional, unfortunately, but they did each contain a working Mobius panel -- one displayed a sample Facebook notification, while the second had the time and date with a small low-res picture of a dog, along with battery and Bluetooth indicators up top. The watch itself was very lightweight, and while glare was clearly an issue today, there's plenty of time for engineers to tweak things before this ships later in the year. The Smartwatch, which can stay powered for up to a week with each charge, will come in both black and white, and should be compatible with both Android and iOS devices. Pricing is not yet set, but representatives did confirm that it'll be coming to the US.%Gallery-190370%
E Ink launches Mobius flexible display for your next smartwatch
Although smartwatch makers have had access to e-paper for a while, there have been few such displays tailor-made for our wrists. E Ink is more than willing to fill that void with a new, watch-oriented version of its Mobius screen. The flexible, 1.73-inch panel won't floor anyone with its 320 x 240 grayscale picture, but it can be cut into timepiece-friendly shapes that take more abuse than a typical e-reader. More importantly for us end users, E Ink already has at least one hardware partner lined up: Sonostar is using the tiny Mobius for a smartwatch this summer, and the odds are that the company won't be alone.
E Ink's three-pigment Spectra displays update pricing in real time, are destined for supermarket shelves (hands-on)
In addition to demoing its Digital Paper collaboration with Sony here at SID, E Ink is showing off some new tech that's consumer-oriented in a very different way. Its solution for ESLs -- electronic shelf labels, obviously -- enables real-time pricing readouts for retailers such as supermarkets. E Ink's Spectra electronic paper display (EPD) is purportedly the world's first to offer three pigments: black, white and, for the demo's purposes, red. That third color can be swapped out for blue or green, but the point is to make the price placards readable -- both for customers and the businesses themselves. While these panels aren't widely adopted stateside, similar tech already has a firm footing in Europe. It's certainly more efficient to update the same screens with new info rather than swapping in new paper signs every time the price of milk fluctuates -- and it looks a lot cooler, too. Spectra will become available sometime in Q3 of this year. E Ink's new Aurora EPD is a little less exciting for the average consumer, but the company says this tech is another first. Able to withstand super-low temperatures (as cold as -25 C), these screens will be incorporated into wireless shelf tags displaying MSRPs in freezers and especially frigid climates. According to E Ink, Aurora's low-temp film allows pigment to move even in cold environments, something we couldn't exactly put to the test on the SID show floor. Still, the company seems confident in its product; it will be shipping its displays to partners starting in July.%Gallery-189117% Zach Honig contributed to this report.
Sony's 13.3-inch Digital Paper prototype sports E Ink's Mobius flexible display, we go hands-on (video)
Sony's new e-ink prototype is getting the test-drive treatment at Japanese universities, but SID provides a perfect opportunity to give the North American market a demo. We found the Digital Paper slab parked at E Ink's booth -- fitting, as the company's new Mobius flexible display is the device's biggest selling point. At 13.3 inches, the panel is larger than your typical e-reader's, but it weighs just 60 grams. That light footprint comes courtesy of E Ink's TFT tech, which allows for larger, more rugged devices without the extra weight. The Digital Paper's form factor matches the size of a sheet of A4 paper, and the on-board digitizer lets users scrawl notes on the electromagnetic induction touchscreen. Naturally, this is just one implementation of the E Ink's display, but it's neat to see a prototype in action nonetheless. Head past the break to do just that.%Gallery-189049%
