This nice video from our friend Charbax shows a couple of interesting Hisense smartphones. The first is a A5, with its 5.8" HD+ display and low $100 price tag, and the second is the A6 which sports two displays - a 6.1" 2160Ã1080 AMOLED display on the front and a 5.6" touch E Ink Carta HD screen on the back.
In July 2019, Dasung started shipping its third-generation E Ink secondary monitor, the Paperlike HD-FT. This e-paper monitor is based on a 13.3" 2200x1650 touch display with a front light. Dasung was kind enough to send us a unit for this review.
The Paperlike HD-FT is a surprisingly slick and lightweight monitor. It's like a large tablet or a large e-reader, but one that connects to your computer via a single cable that requires two connectors - USB for power and HDMI for data. The monitor than acts like a regular 2nd monitor.
CLEARink demonstrated their latest color e-paper displays at SID Displayweek 2019, and following is an interesting interview with the company's CEO Frank Christiaens and CMO (our good friend Sri Peruvemba):
CLEARink latest displays are 9.7" (227 PPI) and supports 4,096 colors. Frank says that CLEARink has over $300 million in confirmed commitments, mainly from the educational market. The company hopes to bring its first displays to the market by 2020.
As always, E Ink Holdings had an impressive booth at SID Dispalyweek, the premier display industry event, here's a nice video the company released showing the many displays that were demonstrated at the trade show:
You can see many devices, electronic shelf labels, the color ACeP films, JustTint window technology the JustWrite digital paper film and more!
E-paper passenger information systems developer Papercast announced enhancements to its range of solar powered e-paper displays. The main new feature is a higher refresh rate - which now can be up to 7.5 fps - which Papercast says significantly exceeds the limitations of other e-paper technology in this sector.
Papercast displays use the compayn's own proprietary e-paper driver board and heavyweight processing power, which enables the new fast refresh rate. Other recent enhancements include an ultra-low power battery operation mode when solar power is unavailable, text-to-speech support and more.
In early March we conducted a 10 day trip to Seoul, to attend the OLED Korea 2019 conference (and a visit to some local display companies). One thing that we noticed during our trip is the adoption of E Ink shelf labels in stores.
We have seen E Ink ESL displays in Samsung retail stores (used to detail the new Galaxy S10 flexible OLED smartphone family), and in supermarkets across town. The ESL displays were used to display price and information (unfortunatly always in Korean) - and were nicely placed.
Color e-paper developer CLEARink announced that Lenovo has become an investor in CLEARink, and the two companies will jointly-develop next-generation tablet devices based on CLEARink's displays.
In 2018 CLEARink announced that it has signed a $10 million supply agreement with a leading tablet maker to start supplying tablet displays beginning in 2019. It is likely that this leading tablet maker is Lenovo, which has now became an investor in CLEARink as well.
ynvisible was established in Portugal in 2010 to develop flexible transparent electrochromic displays produced using a simple printing method. In 2011 the company started producing sample products (we tested one in August 2012). Fast forward to September 2018, the company has gone through a reverse take-over, and the now Canadian headquartered Ynvisible Interactive Inc. has inaugurated its new production line near Lisbon, and we had an interesting discussion with the company's CEO, Jani-Mikael Kuusisto who updates us on the company's technology and business.
ynvisible is focusing on developing the inks that are used to print these relatively simple displays for use in everyday consumer goods and printable surfaces. The electrochromic displays are cost-effective and highly energy-efficient. The company used to have a capacity to produce a few thousands of displays each month, but the new production facility can produce hundreds of thousands of displays each month.
US-based e-skin Displays demonstrated early prototypes of its plasmonic reflective displays at SID Display 2018. The displays combine a reflective plasmonic surface with liquid crystals. The wavelength of the absorption depends on the liquid crystal orientation near the interface.
The company, who's collaborating with Merck in this project, says that its reflective displays will offer the best color gamut in the industry and the best contrast. The flexible displays can be produced using existing LCD production infrastructure and the company hopes to show a full color display prototype in early 2019, and large 6-inch by 9 inch full-color display samples by the end of 2019.
Sweden-based rdot demonstrated its flexible printed electrochromic display prototypes at SID Displayweek 2018. These are simple displays that are produced using screen printing technology. rdot says that its displays will be ultra-low cost when commercialized.
rdot's displays are monochrome segmented (passive-matrix ones are under development) e-paper displays that are non-volatile (but only up to around 15 minutes, these are not long-term). The displays can be be produced in any color.
