If you use an Android smartphone, chances are that your phone sucks in terms of battery life. Most of the modern smartphones these days can’t match feature phones in battery backup and there are reasons for that – ever growing display sizes, power-hungry processors and so on.
Now, Chinese e-reader manufacturer Onyx is reportedly developing an Android smartphone with e-ink display. According to tech blog ARM Devices, the smartphone’s battery can last up to a week on a single charge, which is just phenomenal for a smartphone.
But, there are downsides to e-ink display being used in this phone – it is black and white and the display refresh rate is also slower. However, the under-sun visibility is fantastic.
Company is planning to launch it sometime next year.
We might not be getting our air tickets done to get this one, but it certainly shows promise and may be one day, we will have colour e-ink smartphones that will have nice displays and great battery-life.
Check out Onyx’s e-ink phone in this video:
This is awesome! I would definitely buy this if it was 7″ so I could use it as a tablet for reading. Also a interesting platform for developers like me that are looking for something different to build apps for.
Depending on the price of that hardware it would be possible to use this as a display for hardware projects since the battery life will be awesome and it’s running Android, so in theory you can use this freely with an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi.
Interesting idea. 7″ eInk reader. I’m surprised nobody has ever thought of it.
Heck yeah, someone needs to build a 7″ e-ink and put it on kickstarter or sumthin!
I see what you did there. 😉
I would happily trade screen quality for battery life!
How about a dual screen phone? e.g. an iphone that has e-ink on one side, and normal screen on the other. E, ink would be used for email, calls, notifications etc
@Jason
Motorola F3
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Motofone_f3.jpg
design of this cellphone is PERFECT! some company should make it with LCD screen and i’m buying it!
very, very cool!
Awesome. If samsung S3 gets a week long battery life it would be superb 🙂 🙂
The video, for those who watched, indicated the phone will last one MONTH. My Kindle has lasted for 2.5 months before I needed to recharge it, using it nearly every day. Obviously, the biggest drain on battery will be device connections: 3G, Wifi & Bluetooth (?I presume it has it). Of course, I’d be interested in a device like this.
For me battery life of phone is probably the most essential feature because my battery gets exhausted very soon. This is like a wonder device for me.