The pebble was “e-paper” which was a marketing term for a transflective LCD. It was not e-ink.
E-ink is a proprietary display tech that uses actual magnetized “ink” suspended in “liquid” cells. By pushing and pulling dark/light ink particles with an array of tiny electromagnets, it physically “paints” an image onto the display surface. Even if you entirely cut power, the image remains indefinitely.
Transflective LCD, is an LCD, and while its an extremely small amount, it does still need power to stay on.
Weird, has nobody made a real e ink watch? That seems like it’d be a no brainer to make as watch displays go. Or is there some reason it wouldn’t be good in a watch format?
But the transflective LCDs which were used by pebble were really fucking good. Especially with color in the Pebble Time, and the display that was going to be in the Time 2 was very promising.
E-Ink watches do exists, they are made by Fossil, and are great. Popping mine in a charger while I shower is enough to keep it going indefinitely.
But e-ink can barely do moving images, there are some tricks which can enable stuff like a small part of the display showing a smoothly animating loading icon, but generally, e-ink can’t surpass 1Hz refresh rate.
The UI for Pebble was getting super slick and smoothly animated. That’s where the transflective LCD shines, its the best of both worlds, super low power usage while displaying a static image, but when you DO interact with it, it can do 60Hz animations no problem.
The pebble was “e-paper” which was a marketing term for a transflective LCD. It was not e-ink.
E-ink is a proprietary display tech that uses actual magnetized “ink” suspended in “liquid” cells. By pushing and pulling dark/light ink particles with an array of tiny electromagnets, it physically “paints” an image onto the display surface. Even if you entirely cut power, the image remains indefinitely.
Transflective LCD, is an LCD, and while its an extremely small amount, it does still need power to stay on.
Weird, has nobody made a real e ink watch? That seems like it’d be a no brainer to make as watch displays go. Or is there some reason it wouldn’t be good in a watch format?
It makes perfect sense.
But the transflective LCDs which were used by pebble were really fucking good. Especially with color in the Pebble Time, and the display that was going to be in the Time 2 was very promising.
E-Ink watches do exists, they are made by Fossil, and are great. Popping mine in a charger while I shower is enough to keep it going indefinitely.
But e-ink can barely do moving images, there are some tricks which can enable stuff like a small part of the display showing a smoothly animating loading icon, but generally, e-ink can’t surpass 1Hz refresh rate.
The UI for Pebble was getting super slick and smoothly animated. That’s where the transflective LCD shines, its the best of both worlds, super low power usage while displaying a static image, but when you DO interact with it, it can do 60Hz animations no problem.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/sqfmi/watchy#products