epaper

We are too glued to our screens and yet almost all the solutions being offered mostly involve quitting cold turkey with a dumber than dumb phone. That may no longer be that practical in this day and age but that doesn't mean there isn't an answer. One answer could come in the form of phones using colored e-paper displays such as the one shown off by Hisense at CES 2020. This phone, which is a significant step up from regular E-Ink displays, could offer a perfect balance of utility and simplicity that could keep people off their phones.

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Decades after they were introduced in the very first typewriters, keyboards remain one of the most critical input methods in modern life, even with touch devices. Despite its importance, very little has changed in the venerable keyboard and there is still no one keyboard to fit all. Enter Nemeio, a French company that’s making the still unnamed keyboard of the future. Rather than simply let you change keyboard mappings and try to remember them while looking at the same keys, this keyboard while change its display from keys to numbers to even icons.

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Our smartphone screens are becoming larger and larger but they can only go so far without turning those phones into actual tablets. Some manufacturers are trying to solve that with still to come foldable phones though others take another approach by adding a second screen, usually on the back. Researchers at Microsoft apparently had a different approach to the problem. It did have a second screen, an e-paper one even, but instead of permanently fixing it behind the phone, they put it in a flip cover instead.

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A good idea can turn into a great one if you stick with it, and happily Lenovo has done just that with the new Yoga Book C930. Building on the innovative but flawed idea of the original Yoga Book in 2016, this second-generation model addresses the most common complaints, throwing in a second, E Ink display, upgrading the processor, and generally making for a much more flexible - and thus useful - ultraportable.

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Sony's unusual Digital Paper, a 13.3-inch tablet that pairs an e-paper touchscreen with a digital pen, has seen a rare discount ahead of back-to-school season. Announced earlier this year, the second-generation Sony tablet - DPT-RP1 - targets those who want to take their notes digitally, but much prefer the reading and writing experience of paper.

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Dual-screen laptops might just be the next trend in consumer PCs, at least if ASUS, Lenovo, and Intel have their way. While smartphone makers are still stumped by the foldable display puzzle, laptop makers don’t have that same problem. They can have two screens separated by a hinge and can even have those two screens be of different types. That’s definitely the idea behind Intel’s Tiger Rapids, a prototype dual-screen notebook that has a regular LCD screen on one side and stylus-enabled e-paper display on the other.

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Ebook or e-ink readers are far from dead, especially considering how tablets themselves are struggling for survival. Digital paper devices are, instead, going through a transformation, incorporating new features that were once limited to touch screen tablets like iPads and Androids. Sony's DPT Digital Paper series is one this new breed of e-readers and a smaller, more portable version is coming to the US in the form of the 10.3-inch DPT-CP1, available for pre-order now.

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You may have thought Barnes & Noble's NOOK range of ereaders was dead, but the bookseller has made a surprise new addition to the range, the NOOK GlowLight 3. Following on from 2015's NOOK GlowLight Plus, the new ereader eschews LCD touchscreen and broad tablet functionality, unlike B&N's more recent models, and instead goes back to an e-paper display. That's paired with an always-on ambient lighting system, that can change light tones depending on when you're reading.

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Ebooks have been around for around a decade now and although they have become a force to be reckoned with, they never really made paper books go extinct. Especially in Japan, where, unlike their Western counterparts, comics, more popularly known around the world as “manga”, continue to be enjoyed in their original paper format. One Japanese company is trying to change that by combining the best of both worlds into an ebook reader that can be used to read one and only one content: 18 volumes of “Hokuto no Ken”, or “Fist of the North Star”.

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This is how dual screen smartphones should be. Except, perhaps, for the less than premium specs. Last month, Meizu revealed its own take on the idea of a phone with screens front and back, ending up with a strange design that has yet to be proven in practice. The again, Russian phone maker Yota had two chances to make a dual-screen phone work, neither of which exactly took either local or international markets by storm. Not one to easily throw in the towel, Yota has partnered with a Chinese manufacturer to bring a third gen YotaPhone to life, one that may have even less chance of succeeding compared to its forebears.

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The Meizu PRO 7, when it comes out in the next or so months, is going to be one strange phone. That's going to be true whether this latest bit comes to pass or not. Putting a second screen on a phone's back isn't exactly new. There's even a Kickstarter for offering something similar for the iPhone 7 pair. But whereas previous implementations put a full-sized e-ink screen on the back, the Meizu PRO 7 will supposedly have a "mini" screen instead. And it might not even be grayscale e-ink at all.

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The YotaPhone seems to have struck a chord among some smartphone users. The ability to have some information, or picture, always on display even when the phone's screen itself is off definitely useful. And having a handy ebook reader with you all the time is something bookworms would love. But the problem with the YotaPhone is not only was it limited to Android, it also meant having to buy a new phone, even if you were already an Android user. iPhone users, on the other hand, were out of luck. Now, however, they have fighting chance with the InkCase i7 finally launching on Kickstarter.

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