epaper

If 5G was the common feature that most smartphone makers were touting last year, this year's theme seems to revolve around the screen once more. No, not some punch-hole cutout, in-display sensor, or even curved edges. Many if not all high-end phones boast of 90Hz refresh rates or even higher. In a sea of such advanced handsets, Hisense's next phone will stand out from the crowd with an almost opposite kind of innovation, bringing the world's first slow refresh rate smartphone with a colored electronic paper display.

Continue Reading

There has been a small but prominent rise in interest in e-paper technologies like E-Ink due to their simplicity, energy-efficiency, and extensibility. Tablets and even phones using this kind of display are no longer unheard of, though rare, and that represents just one innovation in that field. Another, courtesy of a company named "Waveshare" is looking into how digital paper screens can operate without any batteries. All they will need is an NFC receiver.

Continue Reading

E-paper tablet reMarkable has returned with a second-generation slate, with the reMarkable 2 an even slimmer, longer lasting paper notepad alternative. Unlike almost about all other tablets on the market today, reMarkable 2 doesn't use an LCD or OLED touchscreen. Instead, it relies on a low-power E Ink panel, much like a Kindle ereader.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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.

Continue Reading

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”.

Continue Reading