Future of E-Ink display smartphones

What is the future of E-Ink display smartphones?

That’s a nice question.

E-Ink stands for Electronic ink, which is a type of display technology where the image or text is visible due to the reflection of light. E-Ink displays are developed in order to make an electronic version of the paper.

So you got it, they were never designed to display videos or the things related to smartphones. They are widely used in e-paper devices, e-shelf labels. Etc.

E-Ink displays are a long way down when compared to the conventional display technologies — LCDs or OLEDs.

They don’t provide satisfactory specs to fit as a smartphone display.

• The refresh rate is too low
• The refresh time of these displays ranges from 450ms to 3.2 secs which turns out to 2.2 Hz to 0.31 Hz which is significantly low in contrast to LCD or OLEDs 60 Hz.
• The videos in these displays run at 2.2 fps, which is similar to scrolling photos.

• Monochrome
• Most E-Ink displays are monochrome i.e. the display offers black and white content.
• Although color E-Ink displays exist the display output looks washed away.

• Battery Life
• Despite its disadvantages the area where the E-Ink display shines is in battery life. Devices with this type of display provides battery life, which lasts up to days.

Final Verdict

Everything got its own pros and cons so does this. Despite its advantages this tech falls behind the current tech in the areas (refresh rate and picture quality) which are most contemplated these days.

So E-Ink displays are not ready to implement in smartphones at least for now unless you want a smartphone only for reading. In the future we may see a few smartphones with these displays that are not intended for normal customers.

There are some smartphones in the market with E-Ink displays.

• Kingrow K1
• Hisense A5