Happy to answer any questions you have. Long time lurker, so this is pretty cool to finally take part :)
I made this because I wanted the eye-strain free and minimalist qualities of my kindle/Eink applied to so much more of what I do on a computer.
Lack of speed and ghosting felt like it made traditional Eink impossible to do most computing tasks. So we focused on making the most Paperlike epaper display that has no ghosting and high refresh rate - 60 to 120fps. We started working on this in 2018.
We developed our own custom epaper display tech we call LivePaper. We focused on solving the tradeoffs RLCDs traditionally have - around reflectance %, metallic-look / not Paperlike enough, viewing angle, white state, rainbow mura, parallax, resolution, size, lack of quality backlight, etc.
First proof of concept in late 2021, and then it took us 2.5 years to get it into production.
And we built a whole android tablet around it.
It’s essentially our attempt at making a remarkable tablet on steroids / kindle on steroids. Definitely some trade offs, but on the whole we think it’s worth it. (& on twitter a bunch of early customers seem to think so too)
Note: it’s 60fps epaper, not off the shelf Eink. We spent years developing what we think is the best epaper display in the world and it’s exclusively manufactured by our display factory in Japan.
There’s still many cases where traditional Eink is going to be better (bistability, viewing angle, white state color, etc), but we feel for more general purpose computers you can code on and do google docs on and do fast multitouch amongst a thousand other things, the speed and lack of ghosting totally makes it worth it.
Think of it as a Godzilla sized pebble watch with a decade of improvement
Adding an additional comment here for a little extra visibility. I would absolutely love, like really love, a USB-C portrait monitor version of this. If I could just plug this in to my existing laptop and use it for reading specs, technical docs, …etc that would be amazing.
Android tablet is a tough sell for my employer due to compliance, security, and such. So buying one of those for work use would take like a year minimum gathering all the necessary approvals and likely would still get denied by someone. But, a dumb monitor with no real OS I can expense that without approval. just a heads up to my boss really to say I am buying this and here is why.
I know you are a small company so have to pick your battles. But, maybe something to consider down the road.
EDIt: forgot to say, congrats on the launch. Looks like a great product.
I second this. I really enjoy reading and writing on an Onyx e-ink tab, and I like the full Android functionality, but I can never use it for work or even for personal email logins, because I don't trust their custom Android build.
I would be somewhat more inclined to trust Daylight than Onyx, but any custom OS is too potentially vulnerable to backdoors for my use cases.
Something like this that you could load your own Linux flavor onto, or simply this tech as a monitor / drawing pad, I would drop the money in a heartbeat.
As long as the bootloader isn't locked, porting mainline Linux shouldn't be as bad as with E-ink devices. Here's a Ubuntu Touch port to another Helios G99 device [1]; I really hope the RLCD doesn't require host driver support.
You need USB-C DisplayPort (DP Alt Mode). Unfortunately it's not a software limitation oftentimes, most of the times it's a hardware design limitation. I guess Onyx figured that they can have two different product lines and milk both, as opposed to what they used to have, which was an HDMI port on the higher end models.
Best would be DP alt mode. However software to send video over regular USB data lines is fairly common and reportedly works okay so long as you have drivers (which generally are not supported to the next Windows release) and are not trying something too heavy - not good enough for games but often good enough for the office type work the OP is asking for.
Is there such a thing as a tablet that accepts video input? In other words, use it as a tablet, then connect a mini hdmi or whatever and it turns into a monitor. Disconnect, and it's a tablet again.
Though he is using a Boox product and I'm wary of them over the GPL violation thing: as well as the general “they'd piss & moan and send the lawyers round if someone took their stuff and used it unlicensed” hypocrisy, the paranoid cynic in me thinks there is something they want to hide in their customisations (hooks for calling home or some such).
Also, those clips are a few years old now so some of the problems he was having may have been ironed out in newer devices & software updates.
Another option is running a VMC client on any tablet that isn't walled off so that you can't: there are a number of VNC servers that create a hidden virtual screen and mirror that so the connecting client because the extra screen.
Same here. I use degoogled Onyx Boox for notes, reading books, sheet music, sketching... Barely connect to internet, beacuse I don't trust their OS and apps. Apps are actually quite good (NeoReader).
Fundamentally, my opinion is all these things trying to move electrophoretic ink fast are misguided. You end up using so much energy trying to move particles that are inherently designed to be bistable. If you want to play a video, you're better off using material physics that was intended to be fast from the start, not trying to force a material that's intended to be slow to fight itself.
Stuff like "We need 50,000 people interested in being a part of creating an open-hardware e-ink ecosystem". This seems like trying to drum up a kickstarter. The modos founder, Alex Soto, what's his track record? Googling seems to show him making ridiculous claims like "To make matters worse, the E Ink Corporation holds the patents for its e-ink technology and only licenses its technology to large manufacturers making availability or mass adoption difficult."
I would love to see him explain that in detail with concrete facts.
Note tha its production was put to stop (last year IIRC) with reserve to possibly start it again.
AFAICT market reception was lukewarm at best and it was not financially viable.
I would have loved one, but I guess leaving the development of a proper OS to the community is not going to land mass adoption.
Average Joe needs a device to buy and use, not to buy and tinker with.
"Market reception" is never going to be very good when you never sell the product. What Pine Notes they made were only sold on a beg-us-for-an-invite basis.
When plugged in to a computer, it would be cool if it reverts to being a smart display with touch screen. It could still charge and transfer files too maybe? I don’t know enough about USB-C, but I really wish devices could do dual function like this.
It's feasible: a couple of Lenovo Yoga Tabs do this* running Android 13+ until plugged in by an HDMI out (which I believe works with an adapter to USB-C).
Ex: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/tablets/android-tablets/lenov...
*(Not touch-enabled in display mode, I believe.)
I have a Yoga Tab 13 (the more interesting sibling of the P-series) I regularly use as a standalone tablet and external laptop monitor - usually lives in the same bag. It's been perfectly seamless for me whether using a PC or a smartphone (surprisingly so). (I believe it shipped w Android 12.)
Of course, it's not epaper - but it is technically feasible.
When venturing into the file transfer territory, a lot of employers are going to veto the device over security concerns. Just like they wouldn’t want employees plugging in random USB drives found on the street.
Or USB drives period. My former employer didn't allow cell phones or really any device that could connect things from the outside. We had the Internet, but it all had to go through their own managed pipes.
Totally fine to bring in a monitor though. Not sure if that would still be true today, given the connectivity of things. I bet you could still bring in a monitor, but you'd risk needing to prove that there was no way it could do anything other than be a monitor.
I think there would be better luck with a dedicated monitor port (HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, VGA), rather than a USB-C monitor, depending on how hard things are locked down.
I was about to write the same comment but you expressed it much better. I would also be happy if it could be both an android tablet but have a monitor mode where it just becomes a monitor.
Plus one on this. Would be amazing if there was a display mode possible or just a variant with a usb to edp board inside without the android tablet bits / battery (even if it meant losing the wacom digitizer in the process)
You can use VNC to make an android tablet into a 2nd monitor. The latency isnt good enough for playing games or anything but for web pages and documents it works great.
I've recently been using a piece of software called RustDesk, which so far feels pretty performant, better than VNC, RDP, TeamViewer, RealVNC etc.: https://rustdesk.com/
You can host a relay inside of a Docker container if you need it as well and it even supports AV1. There's also password auth for each device and permission control.
They have a mobile app too, though I haven't used it as much as the desktop variety, might be worth a shot.
This doesn't scratch the employer itch, but I think you could use an android VNC viewer app and then run a VNC server targeting a small vertical monitor attached to your workstation.
I imagine pulling up the document that I want to read, putting it on the correct monitor, and then grabbing the tablet and taking it to my hammock for some heads down reading time.
Any update on that? There's a comment there that suggests a simple legal "you better not do that" letter is all it takes. Obviously, I am not a lawyer, but I was looking at Boox tablets
Thanks for the link. I am actually just starting my research into that one and options from Dasung.
This is one of those things that I didn’t know I needed/wanted until this HN post. But, I get bad headaches from eye strain and a have a heavy text based workflow so definitely in that target market.
If you did this; would it be at all possible to push a software update so we could use the Daylight tablet as a monitor? Or are there hardware limitations?
Re monitors, you might want to have a look at the Modos’s Glider[1] that was also mentioned here recently[2]? Don’t know if they support a portrait mount out of the box.
> I would absolutely love, like really love, a USB-C portrait monitor version of this.
Would this not be better solved with some remote desktop protocol (RDP or VNC) than with USB? Then you can use it with wifi and just walk off with the device.
I agree with the sentiment, but it is harder and harder to find truly "dumb" devices anymore. USB has a complicated (and vulnerable) firmware stack. Monitors have hackable on screen display controllers. Unless you want to go back to VGA... Just saying...
In this context, I think of two things: hackable spying and data exfiltration.
If a device runs processes that can be hacked so that it can report on your activities. Capturing the display or keyboard input would be examples. This generally requires an active network connection, but not always. Because this device runs a version of Android, it’s potentially hackable (I’m not saying it isn’t secure, just that it would have to be validated).
Second, if a device can store or transfer data, it would be possible to send confidential documents out the door without knowing about it. Because this has on-board storage (and is small), it has this issue too.
A monitor, even if its OSD/firmware was hacked, is much less likely to be able to do either of these things.
There are industries that have real concerns about data privacy and security. In these cases, the dumber a device, generally the better.
Dumb devices can have smarts; they just need to be incapable of shenanigans. Maybe a monitor can be reprogrammed to capture screen shots, but without storage or a network connection, that isn't useful.
What about a firmware flash that nukes the Android part and makes it behave as a display, which hopefully you can flash back to your OS if policy or usecase changes?
I would think the main thing would be no network hardware and ideally no network stack. After that, a minimum of local storage- nothing persistent outside of firmware, and certainly nothing that would provide any type of file system visible to the host computer.
I have an M1 MacBook Pro. But, it is centrally managed, provisioned, monitored, …etc.
It isn’t that it is Android. It is that they would have to sort out all of those things on this Android tablet for just me. So, it is that it isn’t their device within their standardized catalog that is the issue.
Folks in my group can choose from Mac, Windows, and Linux options but we have to choose from the set of standardized options or risk approval hell.
As one of the beta testers, let me just say that I really like this device. It's very different than a kindle, kobo or reMarkable in that the refresh rate really makes a big difference. When I show this device to people, I show them how quickly zooming in on a PDF is. It's way faster and more responsive than any e-ink screen and it's way less addicting than the typical laptop, phone or tablet.
I'm attempting to make this device my main driver over the next few months and while the ecosystem isn't exactly mature yet, most android apps just work out of the box and I've found myself doing a lot more reading, either through an e-reading app (Lithium), PDF reader or Instapaper. I have X, Primal, Telegram and many other apps installed, but I don't go to them nearly as much. The device really is a lot more human centered and it makes for a much more intentional device.
I was playing at an outdoor concert recently - last year I suffered from the combination of paper sheet music + wind.. so this year I used an Android tablet in portrait mode where I could flicker to the next one relatively easily with a finger (no fancy bluetooth pedal control or anything). Me, wind: 1-0. This particular tablet was actually visible in full daylight when I turned the screen light to its maximum.
After this I've been thinking how nice a Kindle-style display would be (not to mention battery), the more sunlight the better, kind of. A Kindle is too small, and well.. I know there are others (that Remarkable someone mentioned), but..
Kobo makes an eight inch e-reader for $270. That's about two inches larger than even a fairly large e-ink reader. It has hardware page turn buttons, I think, but the screen can also be tapped.
Or the Boox Note 3c, which has a 10" screen (don't go for the color screen, the contrast ratio is much worse), also has a front light, $400: https://shop.boox.com/products/noteair3 with the added advantage of running Android 12, so you can install a sheetmusic specific app.
Or there's this $400 transflexive display android tablet, B&W only (not even grayscale) and no backlight:
a lot of applications (especially GTK3/4) will go buggy if they open at all on 1bpp display. Generally anything that does not report TrueColor RGBA8888 or RGBx8888 as first visual will trip them up.
What's the experience like with using it as a Terminal coding app? I'm super interested in using this to SSH into a home machine and programming from this.
How viable is that?
Though even if the device works excellently for that, i'm not sure it would _feel_ good due to it not being a laptop. My wife's ipad pro for example is not nearly as comfy as my mac pro, due to the properly balanced weight of it all.
Still, super tempting to try this.. i've wanted this for so long.
I've got JuiceSSH set up and use the device as a thin client. Coding is a little different since you don't get the terminal colors that you normally use for syntax highlighting. Still, it's functional, and I can do it, mostly using a bluetooth keyboard to do so.
One common psychological trick addictive social media uses is high saturation color, as it causes our monkey brains to enjoy it slightly more. This is monotone and I’d assume that’s a relevant feature point
That, and at night a LED device is literally putting a flashlight in direct line of sight, which does not help in making one sleepy (even with night mode stuff cutting some blue light it's still a flashlight, albeit tinted) so more potential for extended late hours doomscrolling. OLED is kind of better than LCD but still.
Comparatively eink relies on ambient lighting (backlighted ones have it backwards in that regard)
On Pixel phone, there is a Digital Wellbeing setting that can turn your screen into Greyscale mode during bedtime. It is said to discourage the use of social networks and helps you sleep better.
I'd recommend giving grayscale mode a try not only during bedtime, but all the time! My Pixel has been set this way for a couple months and it has decreased my mindless phone usage by simply making the phone more boring overall, without any new device or major sacrifices.
I became concerned that I'd turn it off when I temporarily needed color and forget to turn it back on, so instead I used Tasker to listen for L-R shake action and make that temporarily disable grayscale mode for 20 secs (in case I specifically decide I want to look at color in a photo or disambiguate something from grayscale). Works decently well, I can explain the Tasker steps if anyone else is interested.
On my Pixel using GrapheneOS, I can go into Accessibility settings and enable gesture support for toggling Grayscale support, without the need for Tasker. I'm unsure how other Android ROMs stack up but I imagine stock Pixel has this setting.
It's a great feature, just swipe up from the bottom with two fingers whenever I need color.
I'm _almost_ certain that comes with any Android ROM from 9.0 up as a standard accessibility setting. All my Samsung devices have had it for a few years.
> used Tasker to listen for L-R shake action and make that temporarily disable grayscale mode for 20 secs
Wonderful
I am using gray scale on personal phone permanently, but avoided that on work phone as I might need to discern color in some work documents or screenshares.
What you describe seems like a perfect solution but does it work on all Android phones?
If you could throw some more light on the steps ... appreciate that!
I do think it will work on non-Pixel phones, but you do need to enable Secure Settings for Tasker, which probably can be locked down by Mobile Device Management or other admin control methods that a work device could have.
I've been doing the same for a few months, as I wanted to get an eink phone but wasn't sure how annoying it'd be. Although there's some limitations, like charts or video calls, I got used to it quite quickly in the end. Really recommended, you can just enable it in display settings (at least on my Samsung).
I granted it via ADB using the command line listed, but the other method with app might work too. If you don't have ADB, It's very easy to install by just downloading the right sdk for your OS, and you run the included ADB binary via command line while your phone is plugged in via USB, and USB debugging is enabled (which is an android developer setting).
Set your Android accessibility color correction type to grayscale if you don't have that already. The below Tasker action simply toggles it off and on.
Tasker config is-
Configure a Shake Left-Right event trigger (I recommend sensitivity 'Very Low' and Duration 'Long' to avoid accidental triggers)
Set the Collision Handling on the task gear/settings to "Abort Existing Task", so that you can extend the color lifetime by shaking the phone again.
Of course, once you have this action in Tasker, you can use any trigger to turn it on or off, like opening a particular app, turning it on when you are only at home or away, etc.
Works pretty well for me, there is one slight issue where some type of android display layout refresh occurs when the color toggle happens, which sometimes refreshes the interface you are on in a slightly annoying way. I tolerate it, it's ok, maybe setting a longer wait period would make this occur less often.
If these steps don't work / too confusing, try using the really great accessibility gesture support setting mentioned in a reply, instead or in addition: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40462366
FYI John Dalton was a scientist who pioneered color blindness research among many other fields, so his name is everywhere in color correction settings apparently.
Ah man about a year ago my windows went black and white and I didn’t know why and couldn’t figure it out, I must have pressed this.
Had to reboot to fix it.
Most devices let you enable a monochrome filter and optionally invert the image somewhere in the accessibility settings, for what it's worth. You don't need a special device just for that.
For starters, it doesn't come with the whole "light show", it's black and white.
"Minimalist" types often suggest turning your smartphone into B&W mode (usually an accessibility setting), precisely to reduce temptation to watch videos, social media, and such.
Elsewhere in this thread I see comments that mention "low distraction", "calmer", and something about iPhones frying kids' brains.
This all looks like snobbery to me, based on the association of monochrome paper with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits. In the 18th century we were scared that novels would fry the brains of young women, but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.
I think I might be going off the idea of e-ink, as a result. But my particular interest is nostalgia for the illustrators of the 80s. I would like to see a full-color portrait format 16-inch e-ink display or tablet. Preferably as addicting as possible, because outside of actual pharmacology that word just means "fun".
By way of an experiment - set your phone screen to black & white (in iOS, settings -> accessibility -> display -> color filters -> [on] -> grayscale, on android, settings -> accessibility -> color & motion -> color correction -> [on] -> grayscale), and leave it that way for a day of normal use. Then, turn it off, and note how you react to the change.
Folks aren't calling it calmer because they're trying to look erudite, they're calling it calmer because modern applications put a lot of work into capturing your attention, and color is one of the tools they use (quite aggressively) to do so. Disabling color on the device isn't some way to look snobbish, it's a way to reduce the number of ways the device and applications are attempting to grab your attention.
Since IIRC Shortcuts is actually pretty clunky, it's probably easier to use Control Center to toggle grayscale, which is possible after you add the control named "accessibility shortcuts" using {settings > control center}. That is what I use.
On iOS, you can also set up the “accessibility shortcut” (settings -> accessibility -> accessibility shortcut), which lets you triple-click the home button to enable it.
You can also create automations to turn grayscale back off for apps that need it. I have ones for maps, photos and whatsapp (since people send a lot of pics in my group). They run when the app is activated/deactivated.
I had no idea this was possible, wow, very cool! I turned this on and I’m going to try it out. I kind of love the idea of a grayscale screen and I had no clue I owned one already!
I suppose for some people this is an issue and they genuinely want a physical solution in order to stop habitually doing things they don't like, like Odysseus wanting to be tied to the mast to avoid the Sirens.
I can predict how my behavior would change if I tried this: I'd be pissed off because you'd ruined my game of Heroes III (1999). And Brogue would be slightly less pretty. Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead would be much the same, and news sites and coding wouldn't change much. So my reaction would just be "this is gloomy", it's not like I need freeing from a hypnotic spell.
Hmmm..the way you're arguing against makes it seem like you're being manipulated. Maybe you have an issue too?
If you don't want to use it then don't. I'm not even sure why you're in here arguing against it.
> People often believe that "other people can be persuaded, but not me. I’m the smart one. It’s only those other people over there that can’t control their thought."
> I'm not even sure why you're in here arguing against it.
To recap, somebody mentioned addiction, to colors presumably, as a reason to prefer a monochrome display, and I thought that was ridiculous. So I said so. People didn't react well.
I've read a little part of the article. I don't much like the giant tech and social media companies. However, when I come to phrases like this:
> hijacking of the human mind
> hooking kids to send messages back and forth
I can't bear to continue wading through it. This is just moral panic. A marginal effect of keeping an audience's attention - sometimes - for a little while - is exaggerated by people who (again, like me) dislike the big tech companies, and described like an actual addictive drug. This seems dishonest. But perhaps they actually believe it. No doubt there have been studies that tell them what they want to hear.
But yeah, moral panic, or maybe virtue signalling, or tribalism - something like that is going on here, and realism suffers, and I don't like that, so I said something. I don't know if anybody appreciated me saying something, because maybe it was off-message, but I'm saying it anyway. I'm not claiming to be super-smart, I'm generally a foolish person, and I'm getting a lot of veiled insults here, I suppose because I pissed on your oddly monochrome strawberries.
>To recap, somebody mentioned addiction, to colors presumably, as a reason to prefer a monochrome display, and I thought that was ridiculous.
Somebody mentioned addiction, not "to colors" but to regular content doomscrolling, smartphone overuse, and so on. And the idea was that a monochrome display of videos, social media apps, webpages, TikToks etc makes them less enticing (and thus helps with reducing their use).
This is not only far from ridiculous (then again, some find the idea of a round earth ridiculous too), but something that has both tried with reported success by tons of people, and also the subject of study:
True colors: Grayscale setting reduces screen time in college students
Yawn. You started off calling the use of greyscale "snobbery". Just because people use something you don't, doesn't make them snobs. Maybe if you were more open and honestly questioning, you wouldn't perceive "veiled insults", which I haven't noticed so far. Nice projection, buddy.
But, like I said, if you don't think it works, fine don't do. But when people explain why it works for them, don't diss them for using something that works.
Don't act like you're some perfect moral compass of everybody's experience. You started this thread with insults. And every comment you've made since includes them. Maybe grow up and accept that people like something _you've never tried before_.
Yes, just to reiterate: it's snobbery, I'm pretty sure. Do you think that's an insult? I could sugar-coat it: probably the snobs involved are lovely people, and I can't control their preferences. And I shouldn't have started mentioning insults, that kind of meta-comment is always a distraction. I see what I took to be a direct parody of me with "I'm the only smart one" was actually a quote from the tiresome hooks-in-your-brain article.
Again, I'd encourage you to actually give it a try. It's quick, and I think it would give you some insights into the things people are actually saying and why they're saying them.
>This all looks like snobbery to me, based on the association of monochrome paper with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits
You say it like it is a bad thing. It is associated with novels and writing and intellectual pursuits, because it's less suitable for video/graphics focused social media, videos, and games.
>but times have changed and now it's iPhones that are sinful, and monochrome displays are virtuous, apparently.
False analogy aside, we already know TVs and then smartphones are addictive in a way older media never were. We already have studies about that, and we already have statistics about the dire consequences on teenagers and adults in many metrics.
So, your argument is a little like saying:
"In the 1940s and 50s we were scared that weed would fry the brains of young kids, but times have changed and now it's meth that is dangerous, and weed is ok, apparently".
Well, meth is hella dangerous, and that's a fact, even if they overblew the danger of weed in the 1940s.
"We" being me, various studies, the US "surgeon general", statistics...
>But it's strange to extend that to "buy this device since its joyless monochrome display won't enthrall you"
I never proposed or said anything about "buying this device". I answered the parent and explained why such a device could help with smartphone overuse/doomscrolling issues.
In fact I even explained how switching your existing device to b&w is often recommended for this purpose (which obviously means ...you don't need "this device" for achieve this).
>unless you have a specific personal problem about compulsion.
Tons of people have specific personal problems about compulsion, especially when it comes to their social media use.
Seems like you're... defending the exploitation of compulsive behavior.
Most media platforms are designed to exploit the same behavioural patterns s gambling, and it makes perfect sense to be able to restrict the likelihood of undesirable possible intrusions. If you want to isolate the act of reading or doing anything else without the possibility of being drawn over to an endless stream of videos, seems like a joyful and practical move. Then if you want to watch a video, go do that deliberately, there's no reason not to attempt to exert more control over your own attention, if something like this helps.
Well no, I'm defending the enjoyment of colorful games. Or picture books, or comics. And I'm disputing the idea that compulsivity is prevalent and that it's beyond the power of the user to say "this is dumb, I'm stopping now" when the only way the app tries to exert control is via little colorful animations.
More realistically, I think it's irrational mindsets such as "I need the world to like me" (or something, don't ask me), or a gambler's deep-seated belief in being lucky, that are exploited. I do not think the little colorful animations, in of themselves, have a direct line to the impulse control of most people. And I don't think puritanism is the way forward. "Isolating" is odd, because if I open an ebook, it's in black and white and fills the screen, even if the same screen is capable of simulating a slot machine. So buying a screen that's incapable of doing anything else seems extreme ... well, IDK, I kind of like the way actual paper looks, it feels more immediate than a screen, but that's unrelated to what it can't do.
> Well no, I'm defending the enjoyment of colorful games. Or picture books, or comics.
Nobody is defending the opposite. In my case, I created automation with shortcuts to disable the great filter when I open some apps and to reenable it after I close them. Those apps are currently Photos, Camera, Smart Comic Reader. I could have added games without issue but I just don’t game on phone.
I love Colors (like any human). What I don’t love is being addicted to e.g. Reddit. And turning on greyscale works on this. Call it maybe placebo if you want but the result is there.
I think the deliberate enjoyment of those things is absolutely something to value, and maybe coloration only has a small role in incentivized passive scrolling through media, but I think it's a hell of a lot better to not shit where you eat. If you want to play games, use your game playing thing, don't put yourself in a position where game playing or YouTube is easily capable of competing with other material that's also valuable but not nearly as stimulating or chance oriented.
I think it's pretty common for people to spend hours a day on their phone doing absolutely nothing of true substance, because activities of substance require intention.
I used to think along these lines, then I had kids. I thought it was just appealing to kids, and then I realized they are just more obvious and transparent in what works.
>Well no, I'm defending the enjoyment of colorful games. Or picture books, or comics
Yes, because we were totally discussing the healthy enjoyment of those things, and not digital overuse and addictive behavior to social media and the like /s
>I'm disputing the idea that compulsivity is prevalent and that it's beyond the power of the user to say "this is dumb, I'm stopping now" when the only way the app tries to exert control is via little colorful animations.
Something else I resent is the extension of the word "healthy" beyond the realm of bodily health, into the weeds of psychology, where the meaning of it is more like "approved".
Let's imagine we're on a battleground. You're fighting to defend your nation. I'm on the side of the baddies and I want to take over your trench, so I come at you with ... a screen. It has a colorful, jiggling, sparkling, animated button that begs you to press it. You immediately start drooling, you grab the screen, you're incapacitated and my victory is easy, right?
Or would you in fact be able to resist the attraction of about 150 square centimeters of dancing pixels when it really mattered, showing that this whole trope of mind control and screen addiction is approximately, perhaps not completely but close to completely, hogwash? People have habits in the contexts of their routines of life, and they can feel bad and unproductive and guilty about those habits, but they maintain the habits anyway because it's basically OK and they have no invigorating disaster going on to make doing anything different really matter.
I agree with you that people tend to grossly overestimate the bad effects of a new technology. For example my kids cringe if they catch me or my wife looking at YouTube shorts. My son - that has complete, unlimited access to his gaming PC, installed a Firefox extension to block YouTube shorts. I think the problem will self-regulate at some point.
However I made my iPhone black and white as suggested by others and I love it, I believe I'll keep it like this for a few days because it looks so cool. We will see if it leads to less usage.
>For example my kids cringe if they catch me or my wife looking at YouTube shorts. My son - that has complete, unlimited access to his gaming PC, installed a Firefox extension to block YouTube shorts. I think the problem will self-regulate at some point.
Kids might cringe because it's "out of fashion", then go themselves watch even worse doomscrolling bait than YouTube shorts, like TikTok or whatever's next.
>I think I might be going off the idea of e-ink, as a result.
The main benefit of e-ink isn't what you mentioned in the post, imo, it is that it is great to read with in everything from direct sunlight to darkness, which is less straining for the eyes.
Having something mainly for reading is also a nice thing for us that easily get distracted away from that.
Yeah, it's still enticing me in that respect. Or even something beyond the practical: there would be a great aesthetic to it, a new kind of artistic experience, if a digital work was in full color and presented itself with reflected light, just like a book or a painting, where the white point was exactly the ambient white of a sheet of paper.
For one, images and videos are a lot less visually stimulating. Everything is in black and white, and though those all render fine, they're just not as interesting as they would be in full color. So instead of doomscrolling Youtube shorts, I find myself doing more reading, particularly of books since the epub reading experience is fantastic and causes much less eye strain.
I'm typing on a Daylight computer on Firefox right now with the brightness turned to 0 so it's only reflecting light. It's very similar to the tablet experience for Hacker News, just with less color, so it's not as straining to the eye.
Yea, grayscale definitely impacts the syntax highlighting, as many of the colors end up pretty dark.
It works, though, and I have coded a bit on it. My only criticism would be that the copy-pasting is a little clunky, at least with JuiceSSH. Maybe other apps would be better at it.
There's a stylus that comes with it and lots of note-taking apps. I particularly like the ability to take notes directly in PDFs, which for technical papers can be very helpful.
Any chance of the A4 size device and higher DPI in the future? Will pay any money for that.
A4 e-ink has considerable audience that doesn't know they need it – people who read papers. All the academia is formatted for A4 and stored in PDFs, which is pretty unreadable even on 10". People literally print them on paper to read.
I currently enjoying A4-sized Boox Tab X and it's a game changer, as I read a lot of papers and want to read more outside. Love it so much, and having Android is important (instead of some own walled OS), as I can sync my papers via ReadCube Papers app. I also tried to use it as a monitor for coding, but even with their superrefresh technology refresh rate is still a problem.
I’m guessing letter would be fine too, given how many times I’ve printed out European papers here in the states.
A stylus would help a lot a that point too. So would a hole in the tablet where you can store the stylus — my apple sits and collects dust with a dead battery. I bought it for occasional use, and it’s never ready when I need it, even at home.
yes, academia should totally love this, but my experience is that they just all got used to reading papers on their laptops or tablets.
but I would totally love this. in fact, I have a remarkable tablet just for reading "papers" (ahem Dungeons & Dragons PDFs). but switching quickly between pages is tricky there...
That depends. Back in the day, in my research institute, it was common practice to print out the papers that should be read thoroughly - after skimming them on a Laptop screen.
Not all ones not mentioned in this thread yet. A secondary 19" monitor ties you to a desk. A tablet would allow reading wherever people typically read paper printouts (in the train, while sitting on a couch, etc.)
When I have a complex paper to read I will spread it out on the floor. A single page at a time is too limiting, I want to be able to see page 5 and page 12 at the same time.
It was nice to be able to jot things down in the margins (math, not just notes). Provide yourself the couple steps the author skipped (to show how clever they are).
There's only a certain number of papers you can carry around and flip through like that. With a tablet, it can store hundreds or thousands of papers without getting any more unwieldy.
Try Onyx Boox Tab X. I found it to be the only viable option now and it's really good. They did some own stuff to have "ultrafast" refresh rate (you can choose desirable tradoff some ghosting for refresh rate). Stylus and notes are pretty good too.
> We developed our own custom epaper display tech we call LivePaper. We focused on solving the tradeoffs RLCDs traditionally have - around reflectance %, metallic-look / not Paperlike enough, viewing angle, white state, rainbow mura, parallax, resolution, size, lack of quality backlight, etc.
Would you license this to others at a more affordable rate than e-ink? Lenovo has some e-ink 2-in-1 "thinkbook" laptops and might be a good partner... I'm sure you're considered this already.
Personally I am sold on the 'low distraction and eye strain' of e-ink, and would be keen on buying a computer with that display. That said, I'm more interested in a general computer running a general operating system (ubuntu or any linux) if I'm using something for daily work. Even if your own operating system can do these things I would be concerned with edge-cases for software I need for work, so for professional daily usage I need an OS that is battle-tested, and not based on a locked-down sandboxed mobile system like android where I'd have to fight the OS to do what I want.
I do own and use a remarkable, so I'm probably in the target market. I only use the remarkable for note taking, it's handy for freehand sketching visual ideas or concepts digitally, where typing or any sort of computer drawing with a mouse may add friction that gets in the way of getting the ideas down onto paper. The main advantage over paper is so I don't need to worry about misplacing the pieces of draft paper afterwards, when I revisit an idea months later.
I definitely don't want a tablet for typing code. If I'm going to carry around an external keyboard, I might as well just get a thin-and-light laptop.
I almost bought the aforementioned thinkbook with the e-ink display. Main reason I didn't was that I was worried about compatibility issues if I ran linux, since it's designed for windows.
Oh my god I would buy this in a heartbeat (specifically the RLCD display - I've used enough kindle-style e-ink displays to find them basically unusable for anything I'm intending to actually interact with).
Yes 2-in-1 is very interesting and useful device, the latest one version has color e-ink [1].
For non-color e-ink sporting 60fps display in low-cost laptop with Intel entry level N100 CPU would be awesome as working and learning gadgets, and batteries should last days instead of hours.
I have a hard time getting a sense of what the display is really like from the website and the embedded video (it cuts too quickly, uses depth of field shots of the tablet, etc).
Given that this is all about a new display, it would be nice to show a more pragmatic demo video right upfront. A demo that gives a clear look at how the display behaves with respect to lighting, reflections, animation, touch screen, etc. That's what I would look for when deciding to buy this.
Maybe YouTube reviewers will end up providing this information...
I have both rM and rM2. I reverse engineered the rM refresh API and made an open-source framework out of it. This device looks very interesting and I actually wanted to grab one to play with but the next batch ships so far into the future that I decided to wait.
If you could send me a unit (which I'll of course pay for) on a more accelerated schedule, I'd love to explore the device. Let me know.
Publishing a sped-up video without telling us that it's sped up really killed all my trust I had in you guys. Seriously, what were you thinking? Your main and only selling point is the speed. So much so that that needs to compensate for lack of other features like resolution and color. And then you open the door to cheating accusations? You can now 100x say that it's really fast and no ghosting and all that, but your ethics seem to really believe it was no big deal, so at each turn down the line I'll have to question, perhaps here they also didn't think it's a big deal to pull some dirty trick?
The video in question, the video under "ereader on steroids", appears to be sped up, my guess is because the purpose of the video is to summarize the functionality. A "3x" label would be nice, but let's not jump to accusations! That video isn't at all in a context where it seems likely meant to mislead. You can view other videos on that page that are in 1x.
The page where the videos are from isn't meant to be marketing material. It's a documentation page for people who already have the tablet -- the page says "Welcome to Your Daylight Computer". I personally have no qualms if some of the videos there are sped up, and it has no bearing on my trust of the company.
If you want the promotional videos actually advertising/backing the display claims, check out the main website: https://daylightcomputer.com/product . If you do find evidence that the video there is sped up, I agree with you it's a bad look. But the videos look pretty clearly not sped up based on the human motion.
Regardless there will be third party videos popping on YouTube soon, as the parent comment says.
Many of us seem to have ended up at that documentation page out of exasperation, as we couldn't find video examples on the main page.
It appears that portrait vs landscape on their main page, on mobile at least, conceals that promo video (which does appear to show realtime footage).
If you happen to visit in the wrong orientation (or whatever other variables hide the video) and see claims of speed, but conspicuously absent proof, and then discover quietly sped-up videos buried in the docs, it all starts to feel scammy.
Given e-ink has a history of all kinds of shenanigans, and given I believe this company launched then unlaunched this product a few weeks ago (setting videos to private), it's not surprising some of us are on a hair-trigger.
Anyway, having seen decent enough video now, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. If this is for real, it will be of huge benefit to many who struggle with artificial light sensitivity, and I'm sure they'll do well.
I've seen that page - it has 16 videos and it's unclear which are sped up, by how much, and which aren't. Some look sped up to my eye, and even if they aren't, I simply can't trust they aren't because they've shown they won't inform me so.
This is a super bad look for a new product offering whose entire killer feature and market differentiation is based on its supposed blazing speed.
Posting ANY video that's sped up, without clearly labelling by exactly how much, and when (eg, with a "3x speed" text overlay as is almost standard on internet video), is a huge mistake introducing a product differentiating on speed.
It's documentation. Sure, they could add the speed of the videos, but honestly, I want it optimized for showing me how to use the feature, not serving something it's not: marketing material.
Apple does this as well in it's documentation, and no one complains. Lots of companies do this. So, complaining about the documentation being optimized as documentation is silly in my eyes.
To answer this question as someone who often writes messages the same way… typing that way isn’t actually much faster, but it’s often more enjoyable. It also helps to convey a more informal and relaxed tone.
It looks like the speed of the video is at 1.25 or something like that. The hand/finger moves kinda un-naturally. Is it just me?
Either way, it looks great. I do watch some YT vids, but I focus on the audio (i.e. watching some urgent news on Sky News (live) - video detail is not as important when something very bad has happened).
There are other videos here: https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382 . That one video appears to have been sped up, my guess is to try to show a "summary" of functionality. I tried a few of the other videos and they don't appear to be sped up.
Yeah, for something where the performance is actually a selling point, you should probably feel obliged to include a clock or some other reference in the image. (I'm not claiming anything about this particular video - just that you really want to eliminate the perception of impropriety here.) This was a big problem in robotics for years - it eventually became standard to still do sped up videos but be disciplined about including labels, and robots finally got to plausible speeds at actual tasks - but it didn't take much early-on fakery to get people to assume that most videos were sped up.
(There's a lot of staging and other "creative presentation" that's legitimate marketing - but if you're talking about speed/responsiveness at all, you really need to be explicit.)
I think context matters; that specific video is meant to show a summary of the functionality; it's in a section called "ereader on steroids" and it doesn't say anything about speed. And there are a lot of other videos on the same page which are not sped up. https://daylightco.gorgias.help/en-US#article-493382
Labelling the speed would be nice, but I don't detect any bad intentions here.
I've tried it and it's extraordinary. Is it worth it, at this price, to you? That's something only you can answer. But it's unlike anything you've ever seen. I agree that it needs to be seen to be understood and hopefully they can get in retail outlets at some point.
Please, tell me there's a phone coming along. Light Phone made a mistake not going Android. You totally nailed it with that casually dropped Spotify icon in that shot!
I personally have zero use for a tablet. But if I can have an eink phone, with all the authentication apps I need to connect to work and do banking (and maps and Spotify), I'll drop that iPhone that is frying the brains of my kids instantly.
I've been using an e-ink phone (HiSense A9) full-time for a year, and it's pretty great. Especially things like biking navigation in sunlight are a huge plus.
The Daylight Computer technology is super interesting and a friend of mine that saw one at some tech festival a while ago said it really is that good. Unfortunately an Android tablet is about the least interesting product you could make with that technology, for me. A phone, a laptop or a full-size computer monitor would be a different game.
I've never owned an android, but for any android folks: how do you all think about device security/privacy when the manufacture is relatively unknown and overseas?
I really wanted to get one, but didn't know the risks associated with this.
I tried grapheneos, and it’s great out of the box. It’s snappy, 3x manufacturer claimed battery life, and the camera sort of works (everything else did except the pixel fast charger).
However, to run third party apps (especially those that use GPS, including lyft and uber), you have to install the Google Play Services, which are sandboxed, but cut the battery life by 66% back to the manufacturer claims (so I assume at least some of the continuous surveillance crap was running / successfully phoning home).
On top of that, at any given time, 5-10% of apps would crash on startup.
They gave java stacktraces saying they got an unchecked null pointer exception when looking for random system services. The set of apps would change randomly over time, as companies only test on android, and take a while to fix such low-priority bugs.
Also, it was missing a bunch of functionality I take for granted on iPhone, and that I ended up needing (like crdt-based notes).
On the bright side, android’s non-carplay bluetooth support is miles ahead of iOS.
Tl:dr: Degoogled android would be nice, but don’t bother.
That makes me wonder what your use case for it is. I use the reMarkable and the only time it didn’t do something I wanted was when I wanted more than 5 layers per image.
The HiSense A5, A7 and A9 range of phones could be your answer. Problem is it is a Chinese domestic market phone. A9 does have a GSI of LineageOS with working EINK refresh modes available on XDA so this could be your ticket if the 4G bands are available in your country (basically not the US).
They were still making major design changes just one week ago (first completely removing, then providing a front-facing camera option after previously changing the screen dimensions and device form factor). There's basically no way it ships on their timeline (currently Sept 2024), if it ships at all. They nailed the slick marketing, but have been full of nonsensical timelines and promises.
I own the Light Phone 2 and do like it a lot, but it's a bit too limited and some of the promises of Minimal would solve some of the pain points that Light hasn't managed to, so I definitely see the appeal.
But everything I've seen indicates that Minimal is going to be heavily delayed, if it's not an outright scam. Meanwhile, the Light Phone 2 has been around for years now, and they're planning to release updated hardware later this year.
the OS is slow. the keyboad is laggy and lacking in spatial accuracy to the point where i have to slow myself and retype text messages constantly. don't get me wrong - i'm glad they made it. but i've preorded the Minimal phone and am really looking forward to trying it.
Off-topic, but anyone know if Google Fi would make it easy to switch between two phones without too much hassle?
I'd love to have a second phone that I could take around when I'm not expecting to do any photography or anything. (I know, I could have a dedicated camera instead, but I take pictures on my phone...)
They provide free data-only sim cards. And you used to be able to sync all of your texts and calls in the hangout app, but they got rid of that. The last time I tried syncing the Messages app to a data o my device, it didn't work too well. That was a while ago though so not sure if that is still the case.
Swapping sim cards is probably too much of a hassle. You could just make the epaper phone your primary, and drag along the second phone as needed. Also, there is no reason an epaper phone can't take photos. Plenty of camera gear out there where the viewfinder/preview screen is a very poor preview of the final image and regardless, most folks just snap away with their phones and look at the images later. Modern smartphones do most of the work regarding camera settings.
Your website does its own "improvements" to scrolling, thus on macOS it feels like I'm scrolling through molasses. It's repulsive even. Please, I beg you, just let the platform do its job.
The tablet itself is interesting and impressive. I'm really curious to see that display in action.
> We refuse to accept a future where our devices are exhausting, addictive, and distracting
on a website that has auto-playing videos sliding in from all sides, a background that changes color, and an inconsistent scrolling direction. If the OS is anything like the website, NO THANK YOU, for the very reasons they listed.
Any sane browser should also act like <video>, <audio> and <canvas> are unknown tags unless you allow that specific website to use them. Yet somehow, browsers are no longer user agents.
The site doesn't scroll at all on Firefox(X11) with ublock and umatrix, even when the non-tracking sites are enabled. In Brave browser it somewhat works in a janky way, but given that the site apparently brings a 24-core threadripper with 128GB RAM to it's knees, it certainly doesn't inspire confidence in the product, which otherwise looks pretty good.
Is it possible for end users to deploy their own operating systems and software?
And do you make it easy for them to do so?
One of my pet peeves about the Android ecosystem is Google's abusive licensing restrictions for their extended service stack prohibiting vendors from distributing their own forks of the base software.
This is the sort of device that I'd be interested in from the hardware perspective, but would not even consider if it's not possible to strip every last remnant of Google from it.
You can remove just about anything and everything, which is as much a warning as it is a recommendation. Don't use this if you're not ready to reinstall your OS.
I'm really thinking about buying one, but I NEED someone (even paid sponsors) on YT to review it and post a real-life video demo of them using it for a real thing in their office to believe the claims.
I can really see how this will make meetings, 1:1s, reviews, blogging, and designs at work way WAY more deep and engaging than with my MacBook. And perhaps it'll help me get into reading more, as well!
I think a nice demo can be Duolingo on it - it's something I do everyday so moving to this device could help me in that :)
Unsure how you are intending to use it for 1:1s and meetings--I don't believe this has a camera, so it can't be your primary device you are taking the call on. Of course, as a note-taking device during a meeting, this would shine! :)
My thought process is:
1. During a physical meeting (all my team is co-located so it's easier) - note taking, brainstorming, etc. If I need to upload something from the meeting to our shared Canvas (on Slack) or to my notes (on Logseq) or just file them away (on Confluence, Logseq, Hibob, Slack, email) - seems a lot easier to stay connected and focused on the precious 1:1 time and juggle the data later.
2. During any other meeting; connect from my laptop via Zoom and write down notes on the paper. This will almost force me to not do what I usually do, which is lose focus on the meeting, stop thinking, and idly do something else (like zeroing my inbox, reading Slack, or programming). When I was in the Army and carried a physical paper notebook every meeting was actually useful for me.
holy moly dude you are articulating our value prop and philosophy even better than we can
glad to be on the same team!
long term goals/plans
- make a whole ecosystem of healthier, distraction free computers.. phones, laptops, monitors, workstations, watches, PDAs, epaper whiteboards, etc
- make awesome software that we can offer as public goods, funded by cash flow from hardware and memberships etc
- make 'magical analogue objects' like actually good sunrise alarm clocks, time timers, calendars, habit trackers, better phillip hues, etc
If you stick with an open source ethos and allow anyone to hack and write software for these things... you're going to find a highly devoted niche of lifetime customers. I am one of them. Great work!
Great work! I've spent the last year listening to parents, teachers, and administrators voice their dreams and issues with technology and I think what you all have done here could add a lot of value in the education (EdTech) market in a few years. Educational e-ink tablets are being tested in China this year:
https://goodereader.com/blog/tablet-slates/aoc-launches-educ...
Wow. Great looking device and great long term vision/mission. As someone who hacked an old Kindle to make a persistent weather display, I am wholly in support of what you're working on.
So this is an advanced form of reflective LCD? Interesting. LTT recently tested a color display like that too[0].
A few Questions:
Why is it black and white?
Does the Image stay the same when the device is off?
What is the surface like for the Pen? Is the Display recessed so there's parallax between pen and Display or is it laminated like an iPad?
How is the repairability? Can the battery be replaced easily?
How is software support going to be? Since I'm supposed to link all kinds of cloud accounts to it, I would not buy this without a statement regarding security updates and support lifetime.
1) black & white because bayer color filter will cut your brightness by 66%
2) alas we gave up bistability for speed, so the image doesn't stay when you turn it off (however, we maybe can do quasi-bistability with this tech for watch or kindle sized future devices)
3) the pen writing feel is similar to my favorite japanese paper campus kokoyu. you could argue comparable to a remarkable or maybe even better for some
4)its all laminated / optically bonded
5) we can improve on repairability, its fine, but nothing stand out. we have big plans in the future here though
6) we're aiming to build the business on customer trust so we better be good at software updates! android is hard though, so its definitely a learning curve and requires a lot of resources
7) we'll do better to earn your trust around using our accounts - lots of plans in the coming months and years to be the best privacy + security + sovereignty computers!
I think the average person (myself included) does not know that something can be considered ePaper without being bistable. The two are married in my head because all of the ePaper devices that I've been exposed to thus far have been bistable. If I were you, I would find a clever way to communicate this fact without making it sound like too much of a drawback.
Some more questions about software support. It seems the device is using android. Do you have any plan to support mainline linux kernel? It could allow the possibility to use native linux distro like PostmarketOS (https://postmarketos.org/) for device longevity. Your team could also benefit from delegating some softare support effort to linux kernel team.
we're open to it! we just need to better understand what resources we need internally to support this effort and for the specific mediatek/qualcomm chips we're looking at
Given the level of excitement around this, and the community expertise, if I were you I'd open up as much of the info as you legally can and let the community help. I think there's a decent chance that if you set up the framework, you may not have to do much to get it done. I would:
1. Create a github page where you include as much of the hardware info as you can
2. Include any custom kernel patches that you have for the hardware (I'm pretty sure this is legally required anyway because of GPL on the kernel, so this could double as fulfillment of publishing/distribution)
3. Let people go at it! Early on I expect a community leader (usually a top contributor) will emerge that you can work with to get it done. I suspect you wouldn't have to do a whole lot (beyond information sharing) to get stuff mainlined and even prebuilt distros assembled for the device!
Even if it doesn't work, it's not a big investment and it gives you a massive amount of credibility with the community.
+1. Especially since you drew the comparison yourself to the Pebble watch. Shelling out that much money on a product that might fail is a draw back. Tinkering on this infinitely knowing I could load whatever software is attractive.
Plus I think the Linux crowd would eat up a monitor that lets users bask in the feeling of nostalgia of a terminal with limited color.
I, for one, would love to finally work outside/well lit places using g a terminal and not having to crank my brightness
I need you to tell me. Why are you not selling these as components for others to integrate? If this is truly better, and you hold patents, you would get zillions orders. Every hobbyist under the sun would buy this.
Because that would make it a shit commodity business and you’d have too little value over the manufacturers who would soon cut you out. Why not do it yourself if you think it’s such a great money maker?
If they sell components or monitors then they only have to do one "simple" thing right. If they sell tablets/cellphones/laptops then they have to do a number of more complex stuff well enough that people will consider switching.
Big reMarkable 2 fan here, and it's very intriguing to see some competition to traditional eInk!
Coming from the rM2, my immediate concerns are display density, and impact of the light on writing feel (both reMarkable and Ratta claim that feel suffers with the extra space between the pen tip and display).
Also as someone who makes a lot of pdf-based tools for the reMarkable, I'd love to see a video or details about the built-in pdf (and epub, hopefully!) reader
Source: I was the chief hardware engineer for this device.
The problem with eink tablets is that they must use front light, and not backlight due to how eink works. This means there is an extra layer in front of the layer where the pixels are, which causes parallax effects which makes writing feel fake. This is (likely) why remarkable deleted the frontlight from their product.
Whereas with the daylight tablet, we have a trans reflective display and a backlight. Since the backlight layer is behind the layer where the pixels are, the parallax does not suffer.
I find the experience of writing with a Wacom EMR pen on mine very pleasing :)
> Whereas with the daylight tablet, we have a trans reflective display and a backlight. Since the backlight layer is behind the layer where the pixels are, the parallax does not suffer.
> I find the experience of writing with a Wacom EMR pen on mine very pleasing :)
You are burying the lead here.
This is a big deal, competitors like Onyx Boox don't do this.
I did not pick up on the frontlight/backlight distinction when reading the overview, thanks! Seems like some very novel tech here, I'd love to see more technical details when they're revealed
Reading through the specs I was pleasantly surprised to see Wacom EMR on the list, I enjoy it on my laptop and seems like it would be a great choice here. Best of luck to you and the team!
1) remarkable & ratta are traditional off the shelf eink and have to use a frontlight (above the display) which has many tradeoffs
2) daylight actually uses microperforations in our LivePaper display, so we're able to use a backlight, which in our opinion is superior in multiple ways
one of which, is what you're describing! our backlight doesnt affect writing feel or distance from pen tip to display!
(also way better contrast with BLU on with backlight)
3) thats awesome! feel free to reach out if you want to collaborate, we want to build the best PDF experiences out there as we're serious about knowledge work
anjan at daylightcomputer.com
we will share more details about our pdf reader later this summer when we do an official software launch!
Very cool! Thank you, I will be following closely and may convince myself to join Batch 3 :) And will probably reach out in a few days (I'm sure you're quite busy right now!)
Is it 100% open source? Or is it a device that I'm going to be locked in like mobile phones? Are any chances that the price goes down? I think now this is a factor that prevents me from buying it.
What would lock you in? It's Android, most of your data on apps is going to be saved to the cloud on individual accounts, and pdfs are going to be yours. I'm not sure what would lock you in.
That's absolutely something I do not want after paying almost 800 dollars. Why do you assume that I want to sync my data to the cloud? I maybe want to rsync my stuff to another device of my own. Will I need an account to access the Android store? Again something I don't either want and dislike. And finally will I need to customize it to have root access? I also don't want to do that, I should fully own the thing and do whatever I want. That's what I meant.
Sure, I can. And I do on my mobile phone cause is the most covenient and fast thing to do and don't have much of a choice.
But why do I need to put termux on a device when it is already running a full-fledged linux? How would you feel if tomorrow you are forced to use Docker just because you can't have root access to your PC? For me it doesn't make any sense at all.
I'm really disappointed of seeing cool stuff locked down by default. Why? Why not be a nice player and go full open source from day one? Is that really hard thing to do? Do they lose anything by doing so?
Or at least when I turn on the device for the first time give me options to choose from:
a) A regular Android.
b) An Android that has full root access.
c) Run a regular Linux.
d) Something else.
In any case the user should easily be able to change to any of the above once running.
Is that asking too much for 800 bucks and for a device that has just entered the market?
I need to preface by saying that I wholeheartedly agree with your overarching point. Everyone should truly own their devices which means at least unlocked bootloader, full root access. I also agree that vendor customised androids are also frequently annoying. That said I don't really agree with this take:
> But why do I need to put termux on a device when it is already running a full-fledged linux?
Android is not a full-fledged Linux. It's linux kernel to be sure, but it never pretended to have usual (GNU) userspace. It even uses its own libc. Under this circumstance, I am not sure why it's unusual to have to install an extra package to get a foreign userspace working. It's not particularly different from when you have to use system package manager to install a different shell in your Debian or different libc in Alpine linux e.g. They could go full open source (like AOSP) and this situation wouldn't be any different.
> why do I need to put termux on a device when it is already running a full-fledged linux?
Well, at minimum you are going to need an input method to make syscalls. Most people find it more convenient to run software, such as bash and vim, that talks to glibc that eventually makes syscalls to the kernel on your behalf.
I think what you're asking is why termux isn't bundled with android and the answer to that seems straightforward without even considering ulterior motives: it's more than a hundred megabytes. Maybe 1% of people would use it if you're lucky, and people have a word for large pre-installed software package they didn't want: bloatware
I think we're on the same side but the argument you're using is weird. Linux is a kernel and if you meant distribution then there are still many systems that don't ship a terminal but are still free and open source software
What I think you're trying to argue for is the broader point of it being locked down. Why isn't Termux allowed in Google's store anymore? Why can you not fulfill GPL requirements in their store (you'd need to make a quine)? Why do you need to pass a dozen warning screens and lots of fearmongering online before you get to a state where you've got full access to your own device? Why do many software developers try to detect that state and then refuse to work with you? These are the lock-downs, not that you need to go and "apt install" the software you want to use
> Do they lose anything by doing so?
The ability to do whatever they want is what they lose when you're in control. DRM being one of the main applications, security is often (mostly incorrectly) touted as a reason for what's actually thwarting competition. And I'll grant them that it actually makes sense for non-techies (my grandma manages to activate the weirdest things that are hidden in menus and behind very clearly worded confirmation dialogs, while claiming she was trying to add a phone book contact), but for someone who enabled developer tools and successfully entered a tar command (xkcd reference) it does not. Businesses might want to lock down their work devices, that's a legit reason for locking down as well, but that's not applicable for phones where MDM is not enabled. The only consumer advantage of a DRM'd phone is that a second hand purchaser can be reasonably certain there's no modifications to the OS without having to know how to re-flash it. I don't think that's a good enough reason to justify it, but I did want to acknowledge there are legitimate/objective advantages to it as well even if I disagree with the overall status quo
How's the battery usage? You mentioned that it's not bistable and doesn't retain an image on power-off; does that mean the display requires non-trivial power even while displaying a static image? One of the big selling points of my reMarkable 2 is the incredible battery life.
Any plans for color? I know it'd be a sacrifice of brightness. I'm still interested despite the limitations.
These types of displays use power to change the pixels, but almost nothing to retain the existing image, so battery life will be wildly variable depending on how you're using it. Browsing the web with nonstop animations versus reading a book will probably show massive swings in battery life.
It's not e-ink, but it appears to be the same as Sharps "memory" display, which means it continues to show an image even after power is removed. They have extremely low power draw when displaying static pixels
It's about 50% heavier than rM2; the battery is almost triple the capacity of rM2; I assume these are related and both due to the use of LCD over eInk?
Source: I was the chief hw engineer for this device.
The colors do not invert when the backlight is on, which is great because you can turn on only a slight amount of backlight if you need it, and have it blend to the ambient lighting.
Can I run my own software on it? I would love to buy an epaper portable of some sort, but the fact that they're all locked down is a no go. One day I'll live my dream of vim in the forest grove.
There is so much hardware out there people could be hacking on, improving, repressing all wasted due to difficulty loading new code.
A coworker was given a SONY e-ink device. We quite like it, but the included firmware is limited and dependent on a windows app that leaves a lot to be desired.
This is early hardware that was given the SONY treatment. That means great enclosure and ergonomics, but also conservative use of the display and goofy proprietary interfaces.
Would not take much to make the device a lot more useful.
One day, we will circle around and be talking about these already solid devices and how in-demand they remain despite their age because of your great decision.
Sidebar: I really want one, but am price constrained at the moment. (Too bad, so sad for me!)
Will the production models see an equally open configuration?
If you really do this it would be a fantastic incentive for me. Just knowing the community can tinker makes a product feel more my own rather than "rented" like some systems out there.
This completely changes the chances that I'll buy this. I love the idea, but I just can't see myself ever buying an android device that is running Google's panopticon. I also noticed there's nothing on the product page about privacy, and was about to write this off as another nice gadget that I'd never be able to use.
I'm very hopeful with an unlocked bootloader that the community will provide a more privacy-focused operating system so that I can enjoy this product.
If an unlocked bootloader would satisfy you for this device, then surely the Fairphone should be good for you too? At least for the FP4, you don't even need the CLI or anything - just install the desktop app [1], connect your phone, and run the app.
I'm currently using an old iPhone, but my plan once it finally dies is to buy a pixel phone and immediately wipe it and install Graphene. It seems really weird to buy a google device if I want better privacy, but based on the research I've done it really does seem like the best option if you value privacy, are willing to deal with a little bit of pain to get privacy, but also need a phone that can at least sometimes do things like run banking apps that force you into the panopticon of bullshit.
I know you specifically said pre-de-googled, but as you said it seems like the options there are really bad, but graphene does seem to make it pretty easy to install (although I haven't actually tried it yet).
I haven't done a ton of usage outdoors, but my boox max lumi works for this. IIUC the android it runs is "unlocked" so I think you could use it as a computer if you wanted. I use it as a tablet and a monitor.
Yes, although to satisfy my dream of vim in the forest grove, that vim needs to be capable of opening and writing every (text) file on the filesystem, meaning it needs root
Give it to me with a Linux-compatible chip/board and I am there. This is the display of the solar-powered off grid computer, and succeeding generations will be incredible. And oh yeah, make a phone. With your distraction-free OS.
What if I want this display tech but just as a monitor to use with my existing setup for doing engineering work? (E.g. emacs, tiling window manager, etc.)
The device as it's presented looks like a consumption device ("tablet" etc), but tech like this seems like it'd be most useful for a production device (general purpose computing device, programming/development tools).
I'd like the display, but uncoupled from the lifestyle assumptions that come with a consumer lifestyle tablet accessory...
Lovely product you have there!
I have a love hate relationship with my Remarkable, the distraction free UI fits my brain well, but their complete lack of an API makes it miss the mark of becoming my productivity driver by a light year. Basing your product on Android, I fear the pure distraction free selling point is at risk? How do you see the ecosystem around the device as it mature?
And also, obviously, are you emulating the cloud approach that Remarkable has taken, and if so, will there be an API for me to slip my autogenerated daily schedule on to it? :)
> I think this e-ink technology will never catch on for monitors, because there is just too much lag and ghosting. I think RLCD (like the Hisense Q5), which is much more fluid and has no ghosting is the way to go.
3 year lifespan isn’t a deal breaker for me. But ghosting of mouse cursor and refresh rate might be for existing options. Still researching but the parent post’s tech seems to solve the ghosting and refresh rate issue of traditional eink but alas they don’t have a dumb monitor product.
It's not really e-ink, it's more like transflective LCD, you can buy entire screens from guys like SunVision, LTT did a thing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c0TcGjzKbag
yeah, I tried that once and instantly realized the magnitude of information that is conveyed via color alone by syntax highlighting. Color is mandatory for me
> Lack of speed and ghosting felt like it made traditional Eink impossible to do most computing tasks. So we focused on making the most Paperlike epaper display that has no ghosting and high refresh rate - 60 to 120fps. We started working on this in 2018.
The website mentions 60hz, will it also support 120hz?
we're trying to underpromise and overdeliver, and our display can now do 60 - 120 fps, but believe it or not, our PDF renderer and software can't match that yet.
So we're waiting till we can holistically do 120fps before announcing that.
But if you do frame rate tests, you'll see its 120fps
(for the nerds out there, its 6hz-120hz variable refresh rate IGZO)
While we are talking "LCD" and "In direct sunlight" and "display is close to surface" were you able to fit circular polarizers in there, or will I need to take my sunglasses off when using?
This is the big question. If they (or any company) can squeeze out sub-10ms latency for touch/pen interactions on an e-ink-like screen (like the Daylight), that will be a game-changer.
FYI there's a typo on the product page, "blacklight" instead of "backlight". I assume that's not a branding thing since it's referred to as a backlight elsewhere.
Is there a description somewhere of the actual tech?What's the reason you were able to invent fast-refresh e-ink-like displays when no one else could for over two decades?
You should probably eliminate the "blue light free" claim. Per results on clinicaltrials.gov, blue light conclusively does not impact sleep outcomes.
This is complex for a layperson to investigate, but you have to search for insomnia, sleep disorders, wakefulness during the day, and only studies with results. There are many uncompleted studies - it is typical for studies that have no chance of producing an interesting outcome are dropped by their investigators even when registered. However, those uncompleted studies produce many conflating results.
For example, https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02698800?tab=results specifically investigated using blue light blocking lenses compared to clear lenses. This was not blinded. The differences in all their measures were within 1 standard deviation between the groups, so the result is conclusive that (1) insomnia scores vary very widely among people as a baseline (2) if there is a real effect, it is pretty small and would require a larger sample size to measure. Of course when they measure the part where you don't know if you're looking at blue light, like when you are actually asleep, there is no difference between groups.
This is just to say that the whole blue light thing - placebo effects are real. People perceive this blue light thing as real, particularly tech people. Seed.com is successful. You can do placebos. But you should do the right thing and cut weird claims with no real evidence that are really small brained.
Even if it's not true, I like amber light at night better. No science, just "feels" better. Same with the daylight bulbs, I think they are icky at night.
I know. There are basically no studies that were run to completion. This one was. Go ahead and look for yourself. However, this study proves that if the effect exists, it is pretty small, and probably placebo. Placebo effects are real. But they affect things like surveys. Actual sleep quality did not seem to change.
This looks very exiting! I am a long-time Sony DPT/Fujitsu Quaderno user and love these kind of devices. My question would be whether you have plans in the future to make a 13.3" version. The 10" versions are just too small for my use (mostly reading scientific papers).
Is there a static specs page? The site seems to have been hugged to near-death but even if not it would be great to know the basics not in a video form: size, weight, OS (e.g., can I run my favorite FB2 reader on it), interfaces, etc.
I am totally willing to lean forward and buy one, but from the current state of the site I cannot even figure out if the screen is 4" or 9" or something in between.
a fellow traveller I see. After getting robbed of over a thousand dollars in different early-product purchases that never materialized, I'm skeptical as well. OP has felt very honest to me, and their tech choices are completely much inline with what I would have done, so I'm inclined to believe them, but the more "in writing" the better.
Hi just a minor nitpick - I've used devices like this, and one major complaint about them is that the tips of the Wacom styluses are incredibly fragile (about as bad as pencil lead).
It has been a recurring issue for me that they got damaged while traveling with no way to easily replace them.
If you could engineer a way to protect them (like a proper cap or a clicky pen mechanism) that would be a very handy improvement.
RLCD, so the screen itself is transparent? If it were rendering an image, and a spotlight shown through it, would it project the image effectively?
I've had some silly little art projects that I'd love to try this screen for, if you have any spares/prototypes or anything you wouldn't mind selling or sharing!
> "If it were rendering an image, and a spotlight shown through it, would it project the image effectively?"
No, because shining a spotlight through it wouldn't result in an in-focus image. Draw something on some transparent plastic wrap and shine a light through it and observe what occurs.
It's interesting that Anjan compared the display tech to Pebble, because selling off the company instead of just the IP is where Pebble completely failed consumers. Pebble had something incredibly special, and then Fitbit bought Pebble and (for reasons I don't know) immediately killed all their projects and shelved all their tech. In a different reality, Anjan would have said, "Think of it as a Godzilla sized Fitbit watch with a decade of improvement". Selling just the screens seems like the obvious play here
The Pebbles display wasn't Pebbles own tech, they used off-the-shelf MIP LCDs from Sharp. You can still buy them and they're still used in more utilitarian wearables, e.g. from Garmin, and in the Playdate.
Sharp doesn't make anything tablet-sized though, so that's not what OP is using.
I would love to see terminal/unix being part of the story. I realize that one can install Termux, but telling the story without it would be super attractive for developers. It would also further differentiate from iPad.
Given it has a matte finish for writing, which is super cool, but what about wear and tear?
Writing tactility is provided by friction from the matte surface, wouldn't this wear down or scratch over time? If so is the front "glass" bonded to the display, can it be replaced or refurbished?
Super freaking cool tho, was a sad day when pebble died (sharp MiP display) and I've always wanted to play with epaper some more, such a shame eink basically tried to corner the industry for so long. Do you ever intend to sell display modules using this tech for makers and the like?
My number one struggle is that at the low volume I am selling, my choice of screens that I can procure is extremely limited and expensive. This then also drives the price of the final product.
I guess I am kind of stuck in a local optimum (niche product) , where the other optimum is a high-volume, more mass-market product which would allow me to source a cheaper screen at higher volumes.
I am obviously super curious what kind of screen you are using and who you are sourcing it from. I totally expect that you don't want to share, but on the off chance that you want to - my email is [email protected].
If I may indulge in some silly OCD feedback: the hero animation with pages turning has the shadow on the top right line up with the corner, which makes it as if the device has an inset chamfered bezel, which I feel is of disservice to the device. That tripped me up hard until I looked at the other side where the shadow is hitting halfway.
Anyway, congratulations! I both hope you succeed and that it helps drag the 60Hz eink needle forward across the industry.
But it looks like it suffers from backlight bleeding if the screen brightness is at medium or full. I'm a bit concerned about that, can you help explain why that is happening.
I'm not sure if it's mentioned on the site, but one thing I'd really love to see that could well nudge this into the "buy" category for me is some focus on repairability - I'd very much like to be able to swap the screen, battery, board, etc. in case the worst happens, rather than having to junk the whole device.
I'm glad to see so much interest in devices like this. I hope they succeed. I own an Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, which I've been enjoying tremendously, and specs seem to compare favorably to this.
Question: what sets this apart from say, boox? And in comparison, it seems a battery life of days feels a bit low - is that just a conservative estimate? Is that days with all-day use?
Note: I have literally nothing to do with boox other than being a relatively happy customer, even if I do wonder about how much spyware is in their firmware. On that note - is there any guarantees around software updates? The good and the bad of android is the constant updates. Looks like this is on 13 which is soon to be two releases back - are there plans to support future major revisions or is 13 all this is getting?
Ooh, that's a damn good idea. I used paper maps for years into the digital availability because I like being able to trace paths, draw, highlight things, and annotate them with info.
This would be a killer feature to me, though admittedly is quite niche. If the hardware gets a GPS, the app can be taken care of :-)
First, this looks amazing, congrats! The primary reason I've held off on buying an eink tablet (remarkable/kindle scribe) is because much of the non-leisure reading I do for work requires enterprise-friendly features like MDM and encryption, and even with that plugging into a laptop to sync every document is a major UX hurdle.
Are you thinking about this primarily as a consumer device with, or do you want to go after those business applications sooner than later?
Disclosure: I work at AWS, own a Kindle Oasis, but have nothing to do with Kindle or devices.
It would be cool if we could cast our phone screens to it. That way we wouldn't have to deal with file and app synchronization, cellular tethering, or any of the other friction points of using multiple devices.
Couldn't you cast your Android phone to the Daylight browser? I'm not super familiar with the area, but with the relative openness of Android, there should be other options.
I bought a remarkable. But then a 2 years later had to sell it because my kid was running around and fiddling with my things. I could give my kid the Kindle and will have peace of mind that he can't break, even if he tries. Remarkable is just need a drop on the floor.
How rugged and heavy is your tablet? If it's easily breakable, do you have any future plans to make a tiny, small phone sized light weight paper tablet which one can pull out of pocket like a notepad write stuff and put back, and most importantly have no care in the world of breaking it?
Really cool product! I want this for the display on a fully-featured laptop, not a reader. I want to code in the sun. All I want is a sweet sweet terminal and IDE. Is that on the roadmap?
I like your style! What's involved in such a thing? Since I bailed from Windows Phone 6.5 (after Microsoft broke every promise and turned my expensive and capable hardware into a paper weight by shutting down the store and not upgrading us to WP7 like they promised, but I digress) I've always bought Nexus, OnePlus, or Pixel devices where bootloader is easily unlockable. I did try the Moto X developer edition back in the day which required me to use their website to get an unlock key (still sad that Moto retreated on the openness/unlockability. It could have been a great long relationship Moto).
So, how complicated is a tool to unlock the bootloader?
The product looks very good. However I did NOT like the marketing claim on the front page that points out it is "blue-light free". The claim that blue light is harmful is not really that scientifically proven and if one has blue light at home (awful LED fixtures) this device will happily reflect it, will it not? Please correct me if I'm wrong, I love building light fixtures and 3000K low voltage halogen light, which I believe would work so well with Your device.
I don't think it needs blue light to be harmful for that to be a feature. I personally don't know or care if it's "harmful," but I know that it messes up my sleep cycles so I try to avoid it before bed and especially during the night.
I might actually be in a market for something like this, as I recently cracked my old Boox ... but as I did use few e-ink devices, there was often problem with running Google Play.
I do understand the need for customizing the shell, even with fast fremerate, it still is a Black/White device, but that often means sacrifices had to be made in the accessibility to the rest of the ecosystem and I am not really in the mood to side-load apps :D
Congratulations and well done. I ordered 3 for my company (the waiting time is the only thing that sucks - I wish I could get my hands on it sooner than September).
Also, welcome to Hacker News. You will like it here.
Is there anything you need help with? What's the biggest challenge for you at the moment?
p.s. my email in my profile, if you'd like to reach out.
I pre-ordered! Huge fan and have been checking it out for a while.
My biggest question and use case is about handwritten notes. Like other paper tablets (Supernote, box, remarkable, etc) have custom drawing/writing apps that sync.
I understand y'all have a fancy custom Android OS, but can I expect to see my notes on other devices, and does it have cool features like handwriting to text auto translation, etc?
Congratulations on the new tech, looks impressive! Any plans of developing monitors or portable displays to use with a laptop/smartphone in the sunlight?
Still, once their display partner is ramped up, lower margin is still margin. Get it out there through Waveshare or someone similar.
I have purchased and made use of several raw displays from them. All, but the big e-ink one have been great to work with. That one has some proprietary interface to unlock the real speed potential and individuals cannot sign the NDA. Grrr..
- Syncing changes I make to PDFs to Google drive is tedious
- For some reason there's a restriction of color when drawing on the PDF. Even if The tablet is black and white which is fine, I want to be able to select a wide range of colors since ultimately I'll want to be able to view the PDFs on a legit RGB computer.
This is very cool. I've been waiting for something like this for a while. Since it's so new, are you allowing any hackability like ReMarkable? I'd like to use it instead of Amazon Scribe and integrate against it but $729 is bit steep if it relies on an external service or something.
Oh, since it's Android under the hood, I see that kindle just works?
Seems like a company willing to take risks. If this is successful, do you think Daylight will explore options for color devices? I know that I personally am very sad that twenty years ago transflective LCDs were in tons of devices and were perfectly viewable in direct sunlight and now they're nowhere to be found.
Hey there boochiboo12, I have been waiting for a product like this being a long time kindle user and E-Ink enjoyer. So ofc I have been waiting for a product like this for a while. I went through the website and tried to order it but seems like this isn't available for sale in India. Any idea when it will be available here for sale?
You mentioned RLCDs does this mean the screen technology is in the same family as transflective screens?
I have a OLPC and a Toshiba R500 which have this kind of screen and they sorta kinda do work in sunlight but less so now than the newer super bright iPad screens.
I’m curious if you think you have this down if that means there is a road to color in the future.
Hey there, congrats! I was really looking forward to a tablet made this way.
Two Qs:
1) is the refresh rate locked at 60 fps? Or does it vary between 60 and 120? This is a big deal for me, as I suffer eye strain from low refresh rate displays
2) Why does it cost 'so much'? I mean, what's included in the 729$?
Let me second some other comments here - I would absolutely buy a 24“ display right away. Ideally a colored version. The available options (like Sun Vision) seem sketchy at best, eg their UK rep reached out to me and never responded back - no way I‘d pay them this much without ever seeing the display first.
Hi, I'm a huge fan of the Supernote. I bought it over the Remarkable based on the pdf reading/annotating capabilities, but I think this can be much much better (especially in the age of AI). Do you have any videos or content on the pdf reader for Daylight?
I've been impressed with the Kindle Scribe I recently got. The drawing and note taking is really nice. However, you have to email yourself PDFs to get the information out of the tablet!
Will we be able to get data off the tablet easily? Will there be documented APIs or other automation available?
why not a developer version so people can get Linux on it and you will have the true eink tablet killer?
do you plan to monetize on customer lock in (only reason amazon and google don't open their android forks)? or fear of tech being stolen by having drivers open?
For me the main benefit of EInk, besides the daylight viewing, is battery life. How does your epaper compare to EInk or an iPad? I realize it wont be as efficient, running at 60fps, but I'm curious if it's that much better than a regular tablet display.
E-Ink is definitely not efficient for "animation". It does not consume power in static context being bistable, but switching dot state is very costly. So it all depends on the proportion "static:updating".
I hope you release smaller and separate display modules too, so that they can be added to a laptop/phone case... Especially since a lot of new phones these days support USB C display port..
Also would be nice to see the pebble watch resurrected..
i wish people could understand how hard it is to survive low volume novel consumer electronics.. not meant to solicit pity, but to appreciate why we're all just stuck with big tech after indie company after indie company fail
Apart from the product, your branding (font, logo, icons, colors) is very reminiscent of late-'70s/early-'80s aesthetics, and specifically reminds me of Digital Research. Was that intentional?
Please make a version that has the bezel blend in with the screen. It will make it look much more clean and more modern. The remarkable's thin body and bezels are key to why it is so desirable.
Please reach out to the team at goodereader.com and see if a review can be arranged. they cover e-ink and several e-ink alternatives, including other vendors in the RLCD space.
You are putting together a compelling argument for both skepticism and caution before placing an order for merchandise from the goodereader store. (not something I planned to do)
--
How do you feel about their youtube channel where they review all the various devices in this market segment?
Specifically, have you ever found their reviews to be inaccurate?
Do you know of any alternative source of reviews in this market segment that is as comprehensive or experienced?
One thing I'll say in favor is that they do send their writing staff to the various trade shows.
It's not supposed to be immovable. The nibs are made of felt, and if they didn't rotate they would wear unevenly and therefore the stylus would give erroneous pressure readings.
I'd like to put a custom OS on it. Will that be possible? Most tablets have the bootloader locked out by default, and that cannot quench my thirst for Linux.
Steelmanning though, I imagine you are saying somethign like "if I can't load my own linux distribution on it, then it's not a computer" then I very much agree. OP has said elsewhere in the thread that they will provide bootloader unlocking and you can put LineageOS or whatever you want on it! For me that was the last thing I needed to get me to buy.
This was also my question, and I found what seems to be the answer. It's not quite definitive enough for me, but it's the best I've found so far.
> Note: it’s 60fps epaper, not off the shelf Eink. We spent years developing what we think is the best epaper display in the world and it’s exclusively manufactured by our display factory in Japan.
Would love one - but I was recently burned by an expensive Android e-ink tablet with janky software and meh hardware. I need to be able to touch and play with one before I'd even consider buying it. I hope you make it into retail stores.
Why is there zero information about your company on the website? Especially given you want people to give you nearly a grand for something that hasn't even entered production yet?
"About us: A more caring computer company"? Are you serious? Stop trying to be "cute." Even in you HN comment you don't tell us your name. What's with all the secrecy?
This is really a nice product, but I won't order it unless SolOS and its firmware and drivers are open sourced.
I've probably spent far more than 8000 bucks over the years for devices like this, only to have to throw them away eventually because their software got abandoned and they've been so proprietary that they can only function as an expensive brick on the shelf.
If the software is closed source, I'd recommend everyone to stay away from any product like this. It is a deal breaker for me now, and it took a lot of cash and hype to realize it.
Products like this are not a mainstream product, which makes them high risk for their investors. And you have to minimize risk by demanding open source.
While fully open would of course be ideal, I'd settle for an unlockable bootloader.
I'm guessing whatever random extras "SolOS" grafts onto Android are probably fairly extraneous, and any vanilla AOSP-based ROM would be perfectly cromulent, provided it was possible to flash it in the first place.
I am not sure you are aware how many years of development time are necessary to reverse engineer a driver on mobile platforms.
For me that is where I draw the line, without drivers I won't touch it. I've wasted enough of my free time trying to get Cyanogen run on fucked up proprietary platforms.
If the drivers aren't open source, the company won't give a damn about the platform anyways because they already did not comply with the law of the license of the tools they stole (read as: linux kernel license) already.
I think you're missing out. A different perspective is to just see these devices as temporary and enjoy them for as long as they last. Let's say you can expect 2 years from the device, and it costs $480. That's $20/mo - maybe that's worth it or maybe it's not for any particular device. But at least you can make the choice that way.
I think this way of looking at it is valid, although I don't personally like it very much because it generates a large amount of e-waste.
Regardless, using your model on this device: it costs $725, and if you buy now, won't ship until September. So if you assume 2 years from the device starting today, that's about $35/month.
How about a legal commitment to open source after a delay? I think this would be a compromise that a lot of companies could accept if it would increase sales today at all.
(Ideally there'd be some way of requiring an immediate release as soon as the company loses the ability to continue maintaining or developing the software, but I'm not sure how you'd formalize that.)
I got to try one of these a while back and I personally have to say it's a bit generous to call them e-paper. These are more like reflective LCDs you'd see in a GameBoy. You'll notice all marketing photos of it are in either direct sunlight or have the backlight on. I compared it to my reMarkable in an indoor setting and I would honestly prefer the reMarkable's low FPS over the Daylight's low reflectivity for reading books or taking notes.
Of course this all changes if you plan to watch videos or whatever on it - but for me personally the value proposition of an e-paper tablet is not about being able to consume that kind of stuff.
In the version I tested you can adjust the backlight brightness or turn it off completely at any time, it's a bit like the reMarkable but about half as reflective (the whites are more like gray). If you turn on the backlight then it's effectively just a normal backlit tablet but with a monochrome display and night color mode.
If you're indoors without the sun shining directly at the tablet or without good lighting, in my experience you need to use the backlight for it to be usable, whereas the reMarkable is much more reflective and as easy to read as normal paper in any lighting conditions.
The scroll hijacking turned me off. I have an M3 so it was pretty smooth (not ProMotion smooth but kinda smooth), but I just want to SCROLL a page! Especially with a trackpad (which I exclusively use). Not blocking my scroll halfway through, it's just so jarring. Yes, cool tech, but we want simple websites. Your product should wow us, no special tricks needed.
> Yes, cool tech, but we want simple websites. Your product should wow us, no special tricks needed.
Agree.
Many times when my teams or I built products we had came up with cool CSS tricks or visual pizzaz during the creative process. Swishes, swirls, micro interactions, confetti, particle animations, and all that jazz. Absolutely adore stuff like this.
But: you really need to put yourself into the chanclas of a new user. Of a person who's on the page for the very first time. During their lunch break. While waiting in line for a coffee. Ask yourself: Is that really needed?
And cut mercilessly.
Side note: You can observe a different flavour of that same thing in great screenplays / movies. Nothing is there just for the sake of it; every scene promotes the plot and tells us things about the characters. [0] Compare this to the drawn out, flashy, soulless action sequences you see in DC action flicks or Matrix 2 and beyond.
IMO, the software will be the most important part of the device, not necessarily the screen.
What makes the Remarkable great is that it's functionality (while limited) makes for an excellent experience.
Any more details on what apps will be built in and designed for the device? (not just 3rd party Android apps that will feel like any other tablet).
Also - I would order this immediately to support more e-ink devices, but the display is too small for me - at least 13" to display full page documents.
Is there an SDK or open source libraries that you've developed for the device that developers could leverage? It seems that you will support the android app store, but will there be a separate Sol:OS store for more tailored apps?
Once you're approaching regular paper size, PDF is king.
There are just so, so many documents out there which were laid out with A4 paper in mind, which can't really be converted to any other format with reasonable effort. Just think of every research paper published ever.
People who are primarily reading books aren't really in the market for this kind of device. You can read books just fine on any old kindle and it's far more comfortable on a smaller, lighter device.
Likely to focus on use cases for their display tech. Ebooks are already solved and faster refresh won't meaningfully improve the experience over other devices.
I had a remarkable for like a day before I retuned it. Couldn’t write-to-text into a PDF. Could type into a PDF or could write-to-text in their writing app. But not in a PDF. It was also intolerably slow.
Yes. I have a Boox, and I’m quite happy with it. I don’t use many android apps, but the killer app for me (why I got it over a Remarkable or Kindle Scribe) is being able to run a Zotero-compatible app (Zoo for Zotero) with bidirectional sync for reading and marking up PDFs.
I got super hyped first when I saw all the details. I use a Boox Page and love the device. This would be a super nice addition which could act as a fully functional tablet.
But then I saw the price tag, and that it’s only 190 ppi. That killed it immediately for me. I hated the first few generations of Kindle because of the low resolution display. I think it’s unbearable in an e-ink display. And the price is a bit outrageous for what it offers..
i think your feedback is fair. if you're open to a few considerations:
- with monochrome pixels (ie no RGB subpixels), resolution is not really apples to apples.. things look a lot crisper subjectively than their objective resolution spec
i think a bunch of early customers have tweeted out their reactions to resolution/crispness. id encourage you to ask them for their feedback if you were still curious
not claiming its perfect, just that its not as bad as you think it is.
(PS we chose this resolution specifically cuz it results in a larger aperture ratio which enables a brighter screen.. we had other experiments at 220-240ppi, but we couldn't really tell a difference in resolution, and the brightness difference was palpable)
PPS on price - not much we can do here, extremely difficult to get even the price we did on low batch totally new custom displays.. we're proud of what we're able to do, but we understand there's a tesla roadster effect of sorts.. starts our expensive, and successive generations will ride the cost curve down tremendously
but cant get there without early supporters. so you choose anon! more economical samsung, or more pricey (but worth it?) indies like us!
As you should be proud its a really cool product, but the price points definitly going to lock you into a very small niche audience, it's just too expensive for me your in the price range of full blown ipad air's and technically more expensive than them, with a cool screen tech, great readability, and paper feel, but... no where near the ecosystem or use cases i'd imagine and again, more expensive.
Thank you for the in depth response. My real concern is seeing rough edges in fonts when you closely. That’s just a flaw that hits me too hard as a designer, and I can’t read anything on such a screen. Based on the viewing distance, screen size and ppi it’s not exactly what’s considered a retina display. I will check the reviews that show it up close and if it’s really good I might as well get one in spite of the price!
Oof. I hope the tablet is better than the website. I think I need to switch to a device with a dedicated GPU to see it right. My laptop is struggling, and it's running a 12th gen i5. They seem to be using a video provider that can't keep up either.
Still, the tablet looks exciting, especially since it's based on Android. I'm curious as to how they overcame the refresh rate issue that plagues so many similar displays.
It shows, to me, that they only tried their website on a "normal" mouse with scrollwheel. My trackpad does (sub-)pixel scrolling guys! I'm used to having full control over websites. Those that take away that control feel sluggish and unprofessional (this JS snippet makes our scrolling cool!), and distracts me away from the (sparse!) content.
Product pages that hijack scrolling are inexplicably popular.
I hate them, to the point it kills my interest in the product. It looks like an ad, the kind I use an ad blocker for.
Of course you are going to tell me, it is and ad, but come on, if I decided to scroll down, it means I am interested in the product and I want to know more. No need to hook me up with fancy visuals, it is already done, now, I want information, give me information in the way that is easiest to consume. If you want to be fancy, have a (not autoplaying!) video, but these sites are the worst of both worlds. They are not as cool as videos can be, and they do a terrible job at being informative.
I guess that since Google and the likes with all their analytics do that, it means it works, but to me, it is a turn off. I was kind of interested in that tablet, now I realize I probably don't need it. I probably wouldn't have bought it anyways, but there was a little spark, and you just killed it with that website.
I've been dreaming of a device like this to run Obsidian on. I made an e-ink theme for Obsidian[1] but the refresh rate and ghosting of e-ink makes it less appealing to work with. I am curious to see if this device will solve some of those issues.
In one of the pictures on the site was it sitting on a dock with a keyboard. I use obsidian and would use this as an obsidian typewriter. If I order is it just the tablet itself or more? I presume it runs Linux so any keyboard that would work in that environment would work with the device? Even better if I can ssh into it.
Edit: I see elsewhere in this thread that it’s android. If I can adb shell into it and push my own custom launcher to it, I’ll buy one today :)
This looks really neat and I’d love to see if it becomes a viable replacement for rM2. For now it reminded me that I can set my OLED iPad to monochrome (via Accessibility > Display > Color Filters and crank up Night Shift). I just added shortcuts to my dock to toggle between these modes. Now I have the best of all worlds..
Typing this from my Magic Keyboard at 120fps 264ppi in warm monochrome.
I do wish I could get a graphite tip for the Pencil Pro to use on the textured screen.
Thanks for the inspiration. Works on android 14, too, under accessibility options -> color correction, and you can set a two finger swipe up gesture to switch between the modes.
$729, lol. Inkplate 10 is still on my want list. A 14 inch version at $729 would be of more interest than a 10 inch version which is too small to read full page PDFs. 60 hz update for e-paper is nice but imho not that valuable. I see it as a reading device not video.
Indeed! A Waveshare portable e-ink monitor is $499.99 for the 10.3" size, almost identical to the Daylight's 10.5" display. The external display would also outlast this tablet device for sure.
And if I'm reading the MediaTek Helio G99 specs correctly, it seems to have similar raw performance to a Raspberry Pi 5. One could easily put together a little "productivity PC" using a Pi (or a Windows mini PC), a power bank, and have the added benefit of full-fledged desktop apps rather than Android versions of them.
I wanted to want to impulse buy this thing. But the above analysis, as well as the lack of any real hands-on 3rd party video-based reviews will be a no from me.
we're gadget nerds, its not as bad as you think :)
in fact, no early users have complained about performance at all, either to us or on twitter
we're open to feedback on how to improve the next gen! all we ask is to judge based on actual performance on intended workloads and not specs nor crysis lol
> 2x Arm Cortex-A76 up to 2.2GHz
> 6x Arm Cortex-A55 up to 2.0GHz
> LPDDR4X
> Arm Mali-G57 MC2
Not great, not terrible. I'd say lower middle class phone, roughly equivalent to the Snapdragon 680. The real question is longterm software and security support. I'd bet good money this will se one android update and security patches late or never at best.
I might be a minority here, but I don't really consider the Android OS a feature I want. As a Remarkable 2 owner, I've come to really appreciate the long battery life and purpose built OS. There are no "app" distractions, and it has become an essential part of my daily work flow for note taking and e-book reading.
I wish Daylight success, but at their price, its not a compelling offer for me.
Yeah I was surprised to see it ran Android after watching the trailer showing a lady doom-scrolling on her iPhone before accepting the warming comfort of using the Daylight. Another trailer showed happy contemporary hippies in the forest, or their modern workspace with more plants than walking space.
I figured it was a breath of fresh air from modern devices because it was simpler in its capabilities. But if it's running Android it seems like you'd just be doomscrolling in black and white.
Seems like something that could be solved pretty easily by having self-control and not installing those apps on the device.
Besides, I would have no interest in doom-scrolling black and white anyway. My app timers on my phone, when they switch to greyscale, I immediately lose interest on whatever it was.
Being able to use my ipad as an extra monitor is one of the main reasons I always carry it around.
It might be too late for this model, but enabling the tablet to be used as a USB monitor, with all tablet functionality / storage hidden from the PC OS, or as a wi-di monitor, would easily justify a large chunk of the cost for some of us, and provide the tablet a useful life long past its last android os update.
Any more specific numbers on battery life? I see it says "days" on the website, but I'm curious if there's an hours number with usage condition specified (ie, screen on, reading a book, etc.)
Source: I was the chief hardware engineer for this device.
Anjan can comment further to see if the team these days has any further optimizations in store, but with my personal Daylight tablet anecdotally, these days I am charging it every other week, and using it for 1-2 hours a day to browse the web and read PDFs. I usually have a low backlight setting on it.
I bought a remarkable and while it works well the price is the most remarkable thing about it.
Remarkable is also remarkably unfriendly toward their user base to be built on so much open source tech.
They recently had a IP watchgroup file takedowns for template building materials on figma. Really onerous move given it is perfectly valid nominative fair use to say a template is made for the remarkable 2 the same as you would say something is made for an ipad.
The Remarkable 2 is slow and clunky and starting to show its age. The refresh rate and CPU were slow when the device debuted, and now they're really feeling dated.
Navigation through menus and sidebars is tedious, and the UI isn't very customizable for my workflow. There's too much clutter for things I never use, and the bad UI won't get out of the way.
The new updates with gestures have broken the original ergonomics. The device now false detects a lot of interactions that I'm not trying to perform.
I'm really hoping for intense competition in this space.
I'm a current owner of a Ratta Supernote A5X. I use the Supernote all the time. I previously had a Remarkable 2, but thankfully Remarkable added a subscription which made me look elsewhere and led me to the Supernote.
This seems right up my alley. Although, $800 seems steep.
The new Supernote A5X2 is due this year... at probably half the price? Granted it doesn't have the 60fps display, but it definitely has a bunch of other features. Is the 60fps worth $400 more?
you're right, for some folks it's not gonna be worth the price increase
we understand that, and we hope we can bring the price down with scale
for some of the folks who its worth it for, some of the reasons are:
- onenote or noteshelf or goodnotes on eink working without lag makes it worth it
- obsidian or google docs or your terminal working without latency
- you end up reading way more substacks, articles, blogs, things in the browser
- dragon ball z on eink is fun :)
A whiff of fresh air into the scene. Please keep it relatively simple but performant but with the user in mind. And no, this doesn’t need to have any AI in it.
I have the remarkable and the main reason I don't use it and use an android tablet (with a normal screen) instead is because of the remarkable's bad software support; can't sync documents and notes securely (e2ee) using standard tooling.
Put money in supporting mainline linux distributions and I will buy this in a heartbeat. Many would.
I am only using android as a compromise because it can run the bare minimum software I need and I couldn't find a similar device that runs standard Linux.
Unfortunately, Google appears to be adding new limits to what software on Android is allowed to do with each update. I don't think android will continue to be a viable option for me for much longer. Standard linux support is likely going to be mandatory.
Whether it's from daylight, pine64, framework, or any of the other OEMs working in this space, I don't care. I'll gladly pay anything for a good tablet that does what I need it to do.
To me the videos are absolutely mind blowing, congratulations on the launch.
It feels like a leap forward in an area of tech that has totally stagnated (e-ink). I think this device is tackling a few hard problems all at once. Well done and I wish you luck.
Please note (you will find info in these very pages) that they are tentative, made on prototypes. And they were apparently meant to be demonstrative of capabilities, not of real-life experience.
The photo I linked to supposedly is how the tablet looks like in full sunlight, which I would assume would exhibit the best possible contrast. But the background is awfully dim (around #987 in the photo) (also in comparison to the white frame), and the text isn't very black (around #433). This looks like a contrast ratio of roughly 4:1. The photo probably isn't the best, e-ink displays usually have a contrast ratio of around 15:1. But that's still very low, printers can achieve a 100-200:1 contrast ratio for black ink on white paper.
I was really excited for this - I’ve been saying to all my friends that I wish I could use my kindle for more. Obviously the kindle is quite slow so it’s not a good fit for reading on the web (I use Instapaper a lot and wish I could have that experience in eInk). I also read scientific papers and those often have figures that are very hard to read on a small black and white display, and I tend to scribble in the margins when I referee for conferences.
For these tasks I use my iPad Air, but the eye strain problem is real if you’re reading for hours at a time. Since I bought a small laptop, I exclusively use my iPad for reading and writing. The writing experience could be better, with the surface feeling a little too glassy.
My big worries are the app support. I use notability to write notes, which has OCR and allows syncing to my laptop and phone. My bookmarks sync across browsers. My reading list syncs with Instapaper and my citations with Zotero. Can I get a similar syncing system?
Another perennial problem with such devices is the stylus. I’ve lost 2 apple pencils at conferences. It’s horrible - you now can’t write anything until you get a replacement. At least with an Apple Pencil you can walk into any store and pay the exorbitant $120 to buy a new one (imagine if you could never borrow a pen from anyone ever again and each pen cost over $100 - that’s what it feels like). How will I get a replacement pencil for this device if it falls down in an airport or out of my bag in some conference center far from home?
But as others have said, the iPad is a tried and tested device. It has a powerful ecosystem and great resolution. The base model comes with 128GB of on device storage. And it’s $600, significantly cheaper than this device. I find the price tag hard to justify in comparison .
Source: I was the chief hardware engineer for this project.
Thanks for your comment! I grew up using a Palm III that was already super old when I had it in high school. But years later, my fond memories of the sense of focus I had using it became a major inspiration for deciding to join Anjan’s team for this project :)
Congrats on the launch. I've owned a few Boox devices and a Kindle. I love e-ink for reading and note taking. I don't need my entire computer, but definitely useful for a few things.
If I hadn't bought a Kindle Scribe just 5 months ago, I'd have picked this up right away - if I come into some funds in the next little while, I just might anyway. Lots of opportunity for improvement over the kindle.
I'd love to see a deep-dive on your screen tech and understand how you built it. I love clever engineering. Hopefully you'll be public on some of that stuff. I'm assuming you have patents, so it's out there somewhere, but hearing from you about the process of creation I think would be really interesting.
On your website the "Who we are - A more caring computer company" doesn't link to anywhere. I think you're missing a great opportunity to tell us more about you.
I still think that calling it e-paper is disingenuous. My initial impression was that this was some e-ink breakthrough, but it's really just a backlit monochrome LCD. I'm not sure how they can claim that it's "non-emissive", when it literally uses a backlight. An LCD with an amber filter doesn't come close to the readability of e-ink, so I'm not sure what advancements they've made to make it feel like "magic" or "paper-like". Shelling out $729 to find out how it looks in person, based on a slick marketing site and positive comments from "beta testers", is a hard ask.
I don’t see the word transflective anywhere on that Reddit post, and don’t really know what it means. Where did you get that info, or is it obvious from looking at it?
Hmmm, a little disappointed but I'm I still very interested. My favorite smart watch was a pebble and they used a transflective display, I loved it. If this is more of the same but refined and bigger count me in.
Week+ battery life, truly always on, sunlight readable, much smaller size/thickness and thus more comfortable than all other smart watches.
For me, the use case of a smartwatch is notifications. It lets me keep my phone on silent all the time without missing important messages or calls. Proper filtering is important so you don't get notification spam on your wrist but some notifications truly are important and checking them without taking out my phone, and even sending a quick reply, is awesome. I also use the "extend unlock" feature of Android which works with any Bluetooth device but especially well with one that is always on your wrist. Locating a lost phone is another great feature. Timers and alarms are a given of course. Maps navigation directions on your wrist can also be useful (but you get this for free with a proper implementation of notifications).
To me the paradox of the wearables market is that it seems like the only reason people buy them is as fitness trackers which they are actually pretty bad at. The numbers they report might as well be made up in many cases, and the weird metrics they provide aren't useful. The sensors make the watch thicker and less comfortable too. Meanwhile, it's actually super useful to have phone notifications on your wrist, but people don't seem interested, and e.g. Android Wear really sucks at it. (Can't speak for the Apple Watch as I don't have an iPhone, but I've always felt that the hardware design was ugly.)
Look into Amazfit watches. They're about as close as you can get to a Pebble these days. It also has a bunch of fitness stuff (GPS, steps, heart rate), but you can mostly just ignore that. Mine is just for notifications, stopwatch, and telling the time, and a charge still lasts more than 2 weeks on the original 6 year old battery (I've worn it roughly 23/7 since April 2018).
The newer Amazfit Bips sadly don't have transflective displays and do not last a month like the original Bip line used to. Why they killed off the unique feature of this product line and made it another generic LCD smartwatch when Amazfit already has several product lines of those I have no clue.
I'm excited for all these epaper devices for use on my sailboat.
Everyone uses tablets + Navionics, but glass tablets absolutely suck in bright daylight. It will be nice to find an ePaper device that I trust enough to use for charts.
Looks beautiful and would definitely like one, though I don't think I have a use case that justifies the cost. This looks great for people who do a lot of reading and/or writing outside away from their desk. I wish that were me. My use case, fwiw: 1) I use my laptop for writing because I'm much faster on laptop than pencil anyway and if I have to carry a keyboard+ipad/epad I might as well have a laptop; 2) am not a "writer" so don't need that "distraction free" experience (though I do love the thought of it, I sadly have very little opportunity to sit in the forest and compose); 3) when I do have time for reading for pleasure, I use dead-tree paper (I've had various e-book devices over the years and keep coming back to paper: can throw it in a bag and take it on a hike with the kids without worrying about it getting damaged; I don't like "owning" (aka renting) DRM'd material; I avoid Amazon as much as possible; I buy used if I can find it; I want to be able to pass it on to someone else); 4) if I'm reading academic papers (a good use case for Daylight), I'm going to be making notes somewhere (much faster with keyboard), copy/pasting or links for reference, maybe sending a comment to a co-worker on Slack or making a TODO in Jira, and usually at my desk since it's usually work related. I used to have an iPad+keyboard but realized it didn't really provide me anything over a MacBook, so the kids have the iPad and the keyboard is in a drawer.
Major kudos for what looks like an outstanding device.
I'm too wary to be an early adopter, but I'm glad that there are many people who are stoked about getting in on this. If it turns out to be as great as it seems, it will be a dream come true.
I've tried a bunch of eink tablets (scribe, supernote, remarkable).
At the end of the day, I go back to just plain paper and ink, the advantages of digital just wasn't worth it. I can buy a quality notebook for $25 or less and it will last me a year. For the cost of this device that means I can get a stack of 30 of those notebooks which will last me most of the rest of my life. I doubt the daylight computer will have a 30 year service life.
Nice! This is really neat. I love e-paper but like many others in this thread, wish it was better. This seems to be a really good alternative. I had to pause at the price though.
If anyone is looking for a much cheaper alternative to this very impressive device for the sole purpose of typing or writing in daylight, I made a mobile app you can use in conjunction with a Kindle or other e-reader: https://solarwriter.msol.io
For everyone who’s curious about the screen tech like me, you’re getting tripped up on the marketing term “epaper”. From Daylight’s own comments here, it appears to be an LCD display. Hence good refresh rate (where the limitation may be in what the silicon can drive), no display when off, and mere “days” of battery life. The work is in giving it eInk-like readability.
Happily interested in this, I discover that they have broken the scrolling on the homepage about this for reasons. This tells me that since they have never tried their own homepage, they don't really care about usability so their product is probably not going to be very good.
As someone who had input on the website, I can say we're very concerned about that and aiming to fix it as soon as possible. Honestly, we just didn't get it right before the launch.
Why are you even doing anything with the scrolling? Something someone can do in JavaScript in a WebPage is better than the implementation in my touch pad on my Mac?
You're not wrong. But there's a tradeoff between creating a cinematic experience (which really does resonate with people in a strong way) and adhering to standard methods. We debated both approaches and went with this one, in-part because that's part of our ethos: interface design is in a local maximum, and we've had success in our software prototypes creating new interface primitives that i.e. improve the reading experience dramatically.
In order for this current design to work smoothly across platforms, devices, and input methods, however, it'll need to be re-implemented, and it was probably a mistake to try something so ambitious in the time we had available.
"About" section has 5 (five) words of waffle in it, their ToS is buried and doesn't give any indication of what this company is, except the name, phone number and governing jurisdiction (CA).
Their "founder" in comments here is a newly registered HN account.
Mind sharing which website builder you used so I can avoid them like the plague? I see other complaints here, but for me it completely fails to show anything, saying that a client-side error occurred (iOS 16.6.1), in a full-screen modal with text selection disabled.
WoW! Sounds amazing!
I'm curious about a few things:
How does LivePaper compare to traditional e-ink in terms of battery life, given the higher refresh rates?
Are there any specific challenges you faced while ensuring the display's durability and consistency, especially with the custom tech involved?
How does the viewing experience of LivePaper hold up in different lighting conditions compared to traditional e-ink and LCD displays?
What kind of feedback have you received from early users regarding the usability and performance of the tablet in various applications like coding, document editing, and gaming?
Looks like a really interesting device! I have one question about one of the taglines on the home page "A distraction free space". What are the things inherent to the OS that make it distraction free? Is it Android with notifications ripped out?
I bought an Oasis entirely because of the buttons. Once again Amazon has killed their only reader with buttons.
They clearly don’t care much about Kindles in general, they’ve had software issues like missing features forever that Amazon doesn’t care about fixing.
This lacks ghosting, the screen and CPU are fast enough not to be obnoxious when doing literally anything (low bar, but Kindle). It’s USB-C, and since it runs Android apps it runs the Kindle app.
But no page turn buttons. I get those don’t matter for a normal tablet, but to me their do for an e-reader. I guess it’s just as well, they probably wouldn’t work in the Kindle app anyway.
I had the same thought, and then I realized that they claim to have customizable "action buttons" which supposedly can be used to turn the page if that's the action that was configured. They seem to be on the top and not on the side, but at least two of them are there.
I just ordered one, too! I'm a huge fan of eInk tablets and always loved the Pebble display. Your design is very clean, and the screen quality looks beautiful.
I can't wait to run this as a thin client to my Lenovo P920 ML workstation.
Interesting product, but this is probably one of the worst website ever, it's hard to browse and very hard to find actual useful information, let alone specifications about the HW/Battery..
Very promising. It would be super interesting to have an in-depth (when/if possible) understanding of LivePaper. If it is indeed "as eink but solving eink problems" I feel it could be adopted (licensed) from the industry in a blink.
In general, I dislike Android on eink devices but I have to admit I am talking about classic eink tablets. The main concern would be the battery life, that is usually always reduced in respect of custom linux based OS.
Pioneering new electronic paper technology is extremely underrated and important, kudos to you all for this!
Love that you are calling a tablet what it really is: a computer.
Now for a crazy question: does the Daylight Computer support an external full color display via a usb-c dock? Color when you need it… epaper when you don’t.
A pen-tablet with a transflective display and a commodity OS is very compelling. I've been working for a few years on a "multimedia sketchpad"[0] application with a primarily grayscale UI that screams for a device like this. I imagine the browser port might already work acceptably, but perhaps I'll revisit a native Android port with the Daylight in mind...
I am not an Android user, but I primarily rely on a cross-platform note taking app that supports Android. Does Android with this device support OS-native OCR to convert writing to text? I'm curious if this is usable with Standard Notes.
I currently own and use a reMarkable 2 daily, and then transcribe notes to Standard Notes when I'm near my computer. Would love something that lets me skip the transcription step with the advantages of e-ink / writing with a stylus.
It looks like Nebo is an alternative note-taking app? I will email the Standard Notes dev team and see if they are planning to do the lift for OCR on this type of device. I see upthread someone has mentioned Obsidian will do so.
I dunno, after the steaming pile that the Dasun Color Monitor turned out to be (some notes of mine here [1]), I’m kind of weary of this e-ink thing. The problem isn’t just ghosting and slowness, I could deal with that. It’s also reflective, very poor contrast, bad dithering, awful color reproduction.
That’s not really the point. The point is that companies will sell these new technologies and make the product seem great in their marketing material. Which for screens can be especially annoying.
At least for an apple I can ran into the next store and find out that yes the screen is nice, but it’s still pretty reflective.
Looks nice! I think I'd only get it if I could use it as a monitor though. Displaying more than grayscale colors would be a plus too. Still glad to see it though.
we aim to build a monitor, but hardware companies arent very hot for VCs, so cash flow from selling the tablet is the primary way we are going to fund building a monitor, phone, and laptop
If I could afford it, I would buy this just to support the idea and invest in an industry that focusses more on reducing the “virtual noise” and creating computers that are more like natural tools/artefacts that blend in with our environments instead of separating us from them and from each other and distracting us from what we actually value in life. I hope you succeed on your mission!
Your product is very appealing, and I was just about to place an order. However, the purchase interface seems to be frequently unstable, showing application errors. It took me three attempts to finally see that your product is priced at $729 and won't be available until November. I hope you can optimize the payment system or make the pricing clearer on the homepage.
Without going into pricing details, what's the longevity of an e-ink device at 60fps?
As far as I understand it, e-ink has essentially a "finite" albeit a very large number of refreshes available, when moving the "nodules" to display different images.
Has the issue been solved? E.g. will users be able to get at least 5-7 years of heavy usage out of this device? Or will this become e-waste after 2-3 years?
It’s not eink, it’s a reflective lcd whose design tradeoffs were tweaked for what this manufacturer wanted.
While technically it is an lcd, reflective lcds are extremely readable in sunlight and use very little power to maintain the image on screen. An epaper/eink display uses zero power to maintain the display and uses electrostatic manipulation to refresh the screen.
Hmm. I think there’s some blurring of the lines between “e-ink / e-paper” and what this actually is, which is neither. The makers aren’t directly doing it, but neither are they actively discouraging it. Which is convenient. It would be more accurate to remove “e-paper from the post title and maybe sticky the commentators who helpfully point this out.
- run the kindle app (android app)
- run epub readers like lithium reader
- use our PDF reader or others like adobe
- go into the browser and download books
- use google play books and its beautiful page flip animation lol
If this works it is life-changing for me. Eyestrain is now one of the biggest threats to my career and killjoys in my life. I backed the EazeEye kickstarter (which was backlit LCD) but wasn't satisfied with the result.
A work day without eye strain afterward would be gold. A work day on the balcony in the sun... Omg i am looking forward to the future!
Very interesting product! Being here in Europe (Spain) the price point makes it a non-starter though. Especially with only a mediatek G99 (the same that was in my 110€ Samsung A9 Tablet).
However it's a nice idea and perhaps one that can become more mainstream and thus affordable. It's something I would buy if the price were right.
I'm too late, apparently, I'm only in batch 3 which is arriving in some four months or so. Sigh.
I did buy in though. I have a reMarkable 2 and it's a great device, but the software is super subpar. I'm cautiously optimistic about this device running Android, because that means I can run anything on it.
Pre-ordered! I noticed in the marketing photos that there was a keyboard, but it's not included in the pre-order bundle. Is there a recommended keyboard for the Daylight that's wireless?
This and that open source 60fps e-ink display repo from a few days ago on HN makes me think we're about to see an explosion of new tech that is centered around eink type displays:
Nah. I would wait for an ink display with 60 fps. SaaS is not the future of computing. I need control. For artistic purposes, an iPad and Wacom tablet are enough. But cool product for a rich audience. Why you call it "computer" and then a tablet. Just call it a tablet with apps in the cloud. :)
Very interested to see this. I have a Supernote which has passed the basic gadget test: I still use it regularly after the initial few weeks. But it's true that it is limited to (a) taking notes in meetings and (b) reading and annotating PDFs. I wonder what more I would do with a truly fast screen.
Wow it looks wonderful ! And just when I was thinking about buying a remarkable...
Hopefully I can get one for September.
Also, being on HN and all, how tinkerer friendly is it ? Already the fact that it's android and not a custom locked down os is great but, can I unlock it's bootloader and sideload custom roms for example ?
Oddly enough I find having apps (like Spotify) a turn off.
I love my Kindle + it's extended battery life. Navigation is a bit of a pain in the ass, but otherwise I find it really great at just being a light-weight device for reading.
Looks beautiful though (and I found the website to be nice too!)
Excited for this, have tried out various e-ink things previously and the fast refresh seems like a game changer. Any chance a color version will be possible with this tech? Also - larger (monitor size) screens? I'd love to use this for coding outdoors as well as reading.
I've been in the market for an e-ink tablet for a while, but was always turned off by the ghosting and low refresh rates. It's out of my price point right now, but if it gets cheaper for future generations, I'll definitely buy it!
No glare, but with a backlight and excellent battery life make this a great option for Engineering. The only thing that's missing here is a rear camera. Fingers crossed this is considered in the future!
This looks fantastic! Congratulations, really amazing work.
It's unfortunate it's twice the price of others in the field like remarkable, it's a little bit beyond what I'd buy for "that seems cool, I might use it from time to time"
I have a Boox tablet from a few years ago that I'm still using sporadically, and can't quite justify replacing yet, but if I was in the market this would be very, very appealing. Congrats to the team on the launch! :)
Thank you! I've been itching for a product like this. Hate the strain computer screens give me. Kindle, and Remarkable felt too restrictive. Building on Android is a good move.
I would love a 15" portable external monitor based on this tech, hopefully thin enough that I can hang it in front of my laptop screen and use it to code outside.
Out of curiosity, how did you decide on the size of the device? Was it driven by cost considerations, preferences of the founding team, something else?
I think it’s a little too big for me, but I’m tempted.
I need this to have a dedicated drawing app with layers for me to even consider this. None of the eink tablets right now have good drawing apps even if you can technically do it.
What is the hobbyist developer experience? It’s very interesting but I mostly quit buying computation devices that I can’t hack on. Yeah, I’m not your market, but I gotta ask…
Not your target market because I am a cheapskate and only buy second hand stuff, but I will buy it when it becomes available on my local exchange marketplace. Good luck!
It’s not actually normal e-ink, it’s a kind of LCD, that’s why they say e-paper and not e-ink
I think it’s like the kind of LCD you see on calculators and clocks and the original Game Boy, that doesn’t need a backlight to be visible but can have one
A bit odd on the marketing front. Marketing it as an outdoorsy tablet "sunlight readable" but then won't be available before the summer is over (October+)
I could see myself getting 4-5 of these one day so I could spread them around my desk to work and then stack them up in priority order when I was done.
I have a simple hack to achieve most of the advantages of the Daylight Computer: set the display of your computer, tablet or smartphone to greyscale. Voila!
realize it's a consumer product, and a very cool one. would like to get security information about it so that IT depts can approve it for use by employees.
it's a great personal device, but every lawyer and analyst who wants to use one for company data will be blocked by IT until they get some specs. Android is not allowed in a lot of environments because it's so fragmented and impossible to lock down.
Man looked super cool but its just too expensive for me. I hope you guys are successful so your price point can go down a little so I can buy one in the future!
today's e-ink displays could provide some sort of color, can anyone tweak the color for coding friendly so we can use it in editor or terminal? Just 8 colors would be sufficient for most programming tasks.
Seems almost exactly what I was asking to a e-book reader: fast refresh, powerful enough and potentially open to run user apps and allow offline work; price is nice too. My only complaints are the use of Android, no 13" version that would be a godsend for technical books with graphs and diagrams, and the apparent lack of a headphones connector. Not sure about the latter as the web page is absolutely atrocious to navigate if one is after actual information instead of fancy graphics.
I plan to continue to to wait for the PineNote to mature, because I will always sacrifice functionality to get more openness, but I'm glad something is happening also among the others. Its screen refresh speed is fantastic; I hope they will license the technology to others too, and possibly make panels alone available for sale. As a maker, I would welcome even a reduced speed (say 5-10 fps) version of the raw panel for sale at a decent cost for tinkering.
Indeed. Another advantage of this tablet over Remarkable is that it should be possible to set up synchronization with many more cloud services, including Nextcloud. Remarkable is limited to the biggest commercial cloud providers.
I would recommend something bigger. There are several 13.3” e-ink tablets that will allow you to show an A4 sheet of music. There is even a dual 13.3” tablet that has two 13.3” e-ink displays and folds in half.
GVIDO used to make them, but it looks like they shutdown production. According to the redditor there are still some devices available, but they are hard to find. Might not be worth getting one if they are somehow tied to GVIDO's backend servers...
For those who receive their copies and who also ordered the iPad Nano Textured glass; how do they compare/contrast. I know the stark difference in everything from the material to the entire concept but one has to stick to one, what kind of compromises and limitations will someone be deciding on.
One thing that disappointed me with rM2 was the broken promise of developing your apps, rm2 became
pretty closed (or not as easy and accessible) ecosystem, and I think it suffered. Most people on rM1 praised their DIY and hackability. Daydream looks beautiful, I hope they incentivise apps creation for the everyday engineer, who likes to tinker in spare time - it is Android
Quote: "For a limited time get the founder’s edition complete with accessories. Tablet, stylus, charging cable + extras"
Do they plan to apply Apple's style of asking for an arm for extra stuff that the rest of hardware vendors include by default? I wish good luck to them with that then. Hard pass
I see the website for about half a second on my up to date iPhone and then it just says “client side error” and blanks out the entire screen. Now I have no idea what your product is.
I still use my XO-1 for work I can do with a console (via SSH with vi, tmux, etc).
Alas, a web browser is kinda required for modern dev work, and an 18 year old machine with 128 MB of ram doesn't cut it. rdesktop, x forwarding, vnc, etc are all too slow.
I considered removing the screen and trying to transplant it to a modern machine, but it looks like many months work to rebuild the electrical interfaces and custom pixel layouts etc.
It’s funny that Tech is the source of and solution to all of our problems. But my real critique is that all portable devices these days are around $1000 dollars. I’m sure this display makes the device expensive, why can’t we just have a more humane workflow in our current devices instead of buying a new device?
The most expensive part of a device is the display. This is a bleeding-edge, first -generation, low-production-run display on top of an Android tablet. If it does what the demos show, it's the device I've been waiting a decade for and is totally worth $800, to me. Also, the price includes a Wacom pen. Hopefully they can get the costs down, but the price seems completely fair.
For some, e-ink displays are the holy grail of tech. I have several e-ink devices but the real hangup is the refresh rate. If this solves that problem in a meaningful way it could be game changing.
Some are comparing their display tech to Pebble, which was so threatening to the growing smartwatch market that Fitbit purchased the company and (for reasons I don't know) took all their IP and shelved it. I wonder if Daylight will be able to keep their mission when Amazon comes knocking
I agree, refresh rate is an issue that is more important than energy usage, colors or life time (apparently e-ink dies quicker when viewing videos).
I'm just experimenting with a USB-based external e-ink display to see if it is capable of reading/writing/editing technical documents (started last week), using a device with a 50% more affordable price point.
My first impression was I needed to increase the font size to be able to work. Let's see how it goes.
Video forces e-ink screens to redraw the scene 30 times per second. For static text like an ebook, the display redrawing the scene far less frequently, maybe once every 30 seconds, if that's how long it takes to read a page of text.
I was scrolling and everything on the hardware looked great (although I was looking for how the tech is different from e-ink, not how better its properties are).
Then I reached "Introducing Sol:OS" and stopped right there. Didn't look further and closed the tab. I'm skeptical when it comes to custom OS. Not a lot of startups can handle a hardware+software company. Hardware is hard enough. Software is second class citizen and doesn't get regular updates after a few years.
Not shipping internationally is a pretty frustrating decision. This device is almost exactly what I want, but I can't buy it because you... can't put it in a DHL box with a different country's name on it?
Congrats on the launch, but this is kind of a kick in the nuts.
Mild edit: I checked a UK address and it turns out you can put it in a DHL box with a different country's name on it, you just can't print the word Australia on the box. Nice. If this is because the device can't stand up to kangaroo rides, can I have one if I assure you that I won't take it with me when I hop to the shops?
Happy to answer any questions you have. Long time lurker, so this is pretty cool to finally take part :)
I made this because I wanted the eye-strain free and minimalist qualities of my kindle/Eink applied to so much more of what I do on a computer.
Lack of speed and ghosting felt like it made traditional Eink impossible to do most computing tasks. So we focused on making the most Paperlike epaper display that has no ghosting and high refresh rate - 60 to 120fps. We started working on this in 2018.
We developed our own custom epaper display tech we call LivePaper. We focused on solving the tradeoffs RLCDs traditionally have - around reflectance %, metallic-look / not Paperlike enough, viewing angle, white state, rainbow mura, parallax, resolution, size, lack of quality backlight, etc.
First proof of concept in late 2021, and then it took us 2.5 years to get it into production.
And we built a whole android tablet around it.
It’s essentially our attempt at making a remarkable tablet on steroids / kindle on steroids. Definitely some trade offs, but on the whole we think it’s worth it. (& on twitter a bunch of early customers seem to think so too)
Note: it’s 60fps epaper, not off the shelf Eink. We spent years developing what we think is the best epaper display in the world and it’s exclusively manufactured by our display factory in Japan.
There’s still many cases where traditional Eink is going to be better (bistability, viewing angle, white state color, etc), but we feel for more general purpose computers you can code on and do google docs on and do fast multitouch amongst a thousand other things, the speed and lack of ghosting totally makes it worth it.
Think of it as a Godzilla sized pebble watch with a decade of improvement
Or think of it as a gameboy advanced, advanced