Hisense demonstrated a smartphone prototype with a color E Ink display, developed in cooperation with E Ink Corporation. The display supports 4,096 colors and Hisense says it optimized the display for applications such as web browsing, wechat, and more.
Hisense says it will ship this phone in the middle of 2020.
E Ink announced a new color e-paper technology, which they call Print-Color E Ink, which is intended for the smart education and retail markets. It can also be used in e-readers or e-notebooks, though.
E Ink did not provide much details, but says that Print-Color E Ink panels are produced on plastic substrates and are utilizing a different technology than E Ink Advanced-Color ePaper (AcEP) - which seems to be of higher quality and as such targets different applications. The company is working with partners to "launch color electronic paper application products as soon as possible".
Molded fiber packaging specialist RyPax Wing Fat announced that it will showcase sustainable packaging prototypes for pharmaceutical applications. These smart packaging solutions adopt small E Ink displays.
Smart packaging helps consumers to authenticate products, while giving easier access to product information. RyPax will roll out these new e-paper packaging solutions to their pharmaceutical and electronics clients as soon as next quarter.
Remarkable, the company behind the reMarkable 10.3" 1872 x 1404 E Ink tablet has closed another financing round, raising $15 million from Spark Capital. This follows its $10 million seed rounds, and the company will use the new funds to accelerate its growth and launch R&D to develop future products.
The reMarkable's display is relatively fast (55 ms) and supports pen input. The device is based on a Linux OS and features include 8GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, a 1Ghz ARM A9 CPU, 3,000mAh battery and ePub and PDF file support. The reMarkable is now shipping for $599 (note: affiliate link to Amazon.com)
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" 2160×1080 AMOLED display on the front and a 5.6" touch E Ink Carta HD screen on the back.
E Ink Holdings announced that it developed e-paper displays driven by OTFT backplanes - aimed for wearable and smart clothing applications. EIH is developing the OFTF backplanes in collaboration with AU Optronics.
EIH says that OTFT can reduce production costs as it can be produced at low temperatures and perhaps even using printing technologies. OTFT can also enable highly flexible displays. EIH will demonstrate OTFT EPD displays late this week at Touch Taiwan 2019.
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.
In 2017 HP announced its IonTouch system which enables cheap and easy "paperless" printing on small E Ink Cards. Fast forward to 2019, and now E Ink announced a new technology called JustPrintIt, which is based (and licensed) on HP's IoNTouch.
The JustPrintIt system is a "rewritable, digital, electronics-free display medium" that E Ink hopes to get adopted in smart office, transportation, retail, healthcare and IoT applications. Possible usage cases include ID badges, gift cards, loyalty cards, packaging, healthcare and public transportation cards.
E Ink announced that Landmark Hospitals of Florida has launched e-paper based patient and room information displays.
The patient information display (PID) and the room information display (RID) was developed by DCI, a Foxconn Health Technology Business Group Company. The E Ink displays will replace handwritten whiteboards with low-power and highly-readable displays that pull essential information from the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to clinical staff and patients areas, ensuring accurate communication and information exchange.
Visionect announced that it updated its Joan E Ink meeting room signage displays with new software and a revamped product lineup.
Visionect currently offers two hardware platforms, based on 6" (Joan 6) and 13.3" (Joan 13) E Ink panels. Visionect also reveals that Joan was adopted by Cisco, Amazon and Virgin. You can find out more about the Joan platform here.