I’ve been fascinated with E Ink displays ever since my days at IBM as an intern. An industrial designer alerted me to the technology, and talked about the possibility of making the packaging of a product be self-documenting.
Alas, that was back in 1998. Since then, other products have been announced. I’m especially interested in Readius but am worried that it’ll be as much a letdown as other products on the market.
But now, in 2008, some more functional uses are available. Casio Hitachi has announced a line of devices using E-Ink to decorate the outside of the phone. Yes, in Japan and not the US. When an incoming call occurs, the outside animates and shows you the caller ID or message notification.
See the Slash Phone article with lots of pretty pictures and the E-Ink press release.
It seems to me, without being aware of every single phone that’s out there, Casio is the only company that wants me to see the phone screen all the time anymore. I — like everyone, have you seen wristwatch sales numbers lately — use my phone as a pocket watch, but it’s always asleep for power savings, so I have to flip it a bit to wake it up.
My wife has the ruggedized GZ’One http://www.casiogzone.com/ and the external display is an LCD that is always on. Not always backlit, but if you have any ambient light you can see the time, date, signal, batt and other such basic info. I’d rather have the info, than my pretty color external display.