Technology

59534 readers

3199 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

292

E Ink faces growing competition in the "paper-like" display space - Liliputing (liliputing.com)

submitted 2 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

70 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19284817

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] sxan@midwest.social 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I know E Ink is a company, but for most of us it's become a de-facto term referring to the technology, like kleenex, or q-tips.

I have every Pebble model, and used them until the last one's battery finally gave out. I've been using various e-ink (e-paper) readers, from the first Sony to my current Kobo & reMarkable (one for leisure reading, t'other for PDFs and writing). Are those displays different technologies than E Ink's? Does the display process E Ink uses differ from other e-paper technologies? Are they not all based on polarized, bi-colored balls?

I have nothing against pedantry, but I also think E Ink has lost (or won, depending on how you look at it) the identity game; I suspect the majority of people - if surveyed - would neither realize E Ink is a specific company, nor that the correct generic term is "e-paper." Everyone I know (with whom the topic comes up) just call it "e-ink," whether or not it comes from that company. Similarly, I've never heard anyone call it "e-paper" IRL.

P.S. I just did a search for "e-paper watches", and most results call them "e-ink." Maybe they all use E Ink-brand displays, but I can't really tell since none seem to capitalize or (tm) the term. There's a bunch of cheap watches on Alibaba which are called "e-ink" watches - are those all really using E Ink brand displays?

[–] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

E-paper is the category for any display that looks kinda like paper. E-ink is a specific technology (by a specific company, yes,) that uses blobs suspended in oil in small capsules that are controlled by magnetic fields.

Pebble uses a Sharp memory LCD, which as the name suggests, is a liquid crystal display. If you categorize pebbles as a "eink watches", then a gameboy is one low-power memory chip away from being an eink handheld gaming console, the display tech is otherwise identical - a transflective lcd.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks; TIL.

Pebble advertised their displays as "e-ink", and I never thought to question it. The best lay resource I found while digging into this was an article on TechRadar, which was about a new product but gives a good overview of the technology and history.