E Ink is showing an interesting prototype at IFA 2012 - a smartphone that has two displays, an LCD and an E Ink - one on each side. The E Ink will be used for reading and showing "persistant" data such as network status, battery level and information that the user needs for a long time (such as boarding pass information). This will not only conserve the battery but also free up space on the main (LCD or OLED) display.

The most interesting thing is that E Ink says that several vendors are considering this idea, with at least one vendor that plans to release such a phone in 2013. We can't wait!

There's a very interesting post over at Engadget about Mirasol displays. The company is showing a concept 4.1" phone which looks nice, but these kind of displays are 3-4 years away. The company says that they were actually expecting several e-reader products with Mirasol displays, but Apple iPad changed all that and all the device makers scrapped their plans. They do expect at least one converged e-reader with a 5.7" Mirasol display by the end of the year.

Read more over at Engadget.

There's a new concept mobile phone called 'second-life' that uses a 'double-display' which is an OLED display on top of an E Ink display, and both are transparent. You can switch between the displays: so when power is low, you can use the E Ink to conserve battery. A nice touch is that if you're using the E Ink display, the degree of transparency of the display shows how much battery is remaining. The more transparent the display, the less battery remaining.

We're not sure if it's possible to create a transparent E Ink... but this concept design is nice in any case...

Samsung has a new phone, called the Alias 2, that is due soon, and has a keyboard in which each key is a small "display". Engadget now claims that they got it confirmed - it uses an E Ink display.

Samsung Alias2

The phone is said to cost only 79$... It should be interesting to see how this story unfolds later this month.

MOTO dev group (not affiliated with Motorola...) have built a concept phone - running Google's Android OS with an E Ink display. It's just a prototype, but they have a nice video:

Samsung will release a new phone soon, the Alias2:

Samsung Alias2

Interestingly, each 'key' in the keyboard is actually a small display. There are several OLED keyboards around, but in this case, we hear that the keys actually retain their display when the power is off. So this might be an e ink display.