
PopSlate, an E ink case for your iPhone - jdoliner
http://www.popslate.com/
======
devnonymous
Interesting. Tho' since I already know about yotaphone [
[http://yotaphone.com/in-en/](http://yotaphone.com/in-en/) ] this seems like a
compromise. The 'second display' as a case does not seem to have the
interactivity that the built-in display of yotaphone has. Also, you'd have to
turn the bluetooth on to change display ...and yet another 'device' to charge,
so well not for me.

I am waiting for yotaphone2 to be released

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romaniv
I want a proper E-Inc smartphone, damn it! With no OLED screen. The number of
times I used my cellphone to watch videos: 0, as far as I remember. Number of
times I wished my phone had longer battery life and didn't auto-dim after 30
seconds: well, every single time I use it for more than 30 seconds.

Yeah, yeah, I know that you need fast screen for shooting videos. Whatever. I
would settle for a phone with no camera and EInk screen without thinking
twice.

~~~
devnonymous
I know what you mean. I feel the same way about not just the display but about
phone having physical keys or qwerty keyboards ...I mean, the old casio and
palms had it right for useful phones to get shit done as the _primary_
function and taking funny cat pics/videos or playing games as secondary. Ah
well, I guess I am just old.

BTW, as far as E-ink displays are concerned, do you know about the yotaphone ?
[http://yotaphone.com/in-en/](http://yotaphone.com/in-en/) ? The yotaphone2 is
scheduled to be released sooish; I plan on getting one.

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Tepix
Popslate is pretty cool, I saw it at MWC 2013 in February of 2013. I guess it
never took off because it was too expensive.

Guess what - it's gotten more expensive ($129 now).

Bummer.

~~~
pjc50
I came here to wonder about the price, and there's the answer. It's a pity
that eInk is a great technology that remains horribly expensive. Not sure why;
manufacturing yield? Rare inputs? Small volumes?

~~~
unwind
There's no proof that the product is at a particular price point just because
one of the needed components is expensive.

It might just be priced at what they perceive that the market is willing to
pay, this is kind of a luxury product with very little competition, after all.

~~~
olefoo
Also it could be that they are going for the profit maximising price curve.

$129 is worth it; if you would use the functionality a lot. And they must be
selling enough units at that price to make it worthwhile for them.

Without knowing their cost structure it's hard to say; if their production
capacity is limited there may be no way to make enough to meet demand at a
lower price.

The wiki page is interesting read
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_maximization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_maximization)

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nolk100
I used to wear a Pebble watch every day and found it useful but not overly so.
That needed charging every 5-7 days, and this claims to last a week on a
single charge. I don't wear the pebble watch any more because as lazy as it
sounds, I kept forgetting to charge it when it ran out of battery, and there
were days where I was walking around with a dead watch, which was at that
point essentially an expensive wristband.

With my phone, I know I need to charge it every day and it is a habit to plug
it in just before I go to sleep every day. With the pebble, and I think this
too, sometimes the battery would last 5 days, sometimes 8, and that irregular
charging cycles means it's hard to form habits around charging.

It became annoying to remember to charge the Pebble and take it off and put it
on again. The benefits from having it became less appealing. I fear the same
might happen with this if I were to own it, and it would become a bulky iPhone
case. At $129 it might be worth a punt but I'm skeptical.

~~~
JohnTHaller
This display is actually electronic paper, so the display doesn't use power
once it's set. Power is just used by the bluetooth and rest of the bits to
monitor for changes in the display. If they could let you switch it on only
when you want to change it, it could likely last a lot longer. The Pebble has
a fake "e-paper" screen that's actually not electronic paper, it's a black and
white LCD which constantly draws paper.

~~~
mcb3k
e-paper, or electronic paper, is a generic term for any kind of display that
doesn't work by emitting light, which the pebble, the popSLATE, and ereaders
like the nook or kindle do. What you are describing is e-Ink, which is a
specific implementation of a non-light-emitting screen generally used in
ereaders.

That being said, it does seem that popSLATE is using a screen like what is
used in an ereader, and not like what is used in the pebble.

~~~
JohnTHaller
The thing is, pre Pebble, everyone understood that both terms meant something
that didn't use power once an image was displayed. The Pebble is the first
product I was aware of that abused the term. Everyone I spoke to thought it
was the same clear display used in an ereader when it's actually just similar
tech to my retired Palm III.

~~~
mcb3k
I don't really think it abuses the term, since it doesn't require a backlight
to display things, it is technically correct to call it e-paper. I also
remember the people at Pebble discussing the differences between e-Ink and
e-paper when it first came out. It's not like they hid how the Pebble's
display worked.

Besides, an e-Ink screen would be a horrible experience given how the display
gets used in the Pebble watch.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It always seemed purposely misleading to me. Heck they don't even use the term
LCD in the technical specifications... which is odd because that's what it
actually is. And it did work as I had multiple friends, including several
technically minded ones, who were misled by Pebble's terminology and thought
it was an ereader-quality display.

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arethuza
I was standing behind someone in a queue for boarding a flight whose phone
died from lack of charge as they were about to hand it over to be scanned - so
having your boarding pass on an e-ink display might actually be a pretty good
idea...

~~~
caractacus
Is it really worth $129 so that you don't have to print out a paper copy of
your boarding pass when your battery is low?

~~~
vertex-four
A lot of people no longer have printers, or at least working ones. They'd have
to find an Internet cafe and brave the risk of keyloggers, print things off at
work, or get a document printing company to do it.

~~~
uptown
Or print it at a kiosk upon check-in?

~~~
bhaak
I can check-in from my phone.

Edit: downvotes don't make that any less true. The situation the OP was
observing could very well have been that the person had checked-in via phone
and when boarding was starting, the phone's battery died.

~~~
arethuza
Yes, she had an airline app that allowed you to check in using your phone. Not
much use if your phone runs out of charge just when you are about to get it
scanned to board the flight!

~~~
bhaak
The question was why didn't she get the paper when she checked in to her
flight at the kiosk at the airport?

Because she doesn't necessarily was even near the airport when she checked in.
Nowadays you can check-in online or via your phone up to 24 hours before your
flight starts.

And you never see any paper. Yeah, that sucks when your phone runs out of
battery. In our trains, the conductor has now USB chargers in case such things
happen.

Technology fails, we fail. It happens. We manage to adapt.

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covercash
A lot of people are commenting on the price but the thing that struck me was
the thickness. Based on the images it looks to at least double the thickness
of the phone!

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listic
Like the InkCase, [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/378232716/inkcase-
plus-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/378232716/inkcase-plus-e-ink-
screen-for-android-phone) but for iPhone. Nice.

~~~
michaelmior
Thanks for sharing this! PopSlate looks cool but I was a little sad that this
would be difficult to pull off for Android due to fragmentation.

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johnchristopher
>SAVE POWER

> Use the ultra low-power, ePaper screen to extend your battery life

That's one way to put it but:

    
    
        s/extend/save
    

is more honest.

~~~
KnightHawk3
Minor nitpick, but shouldn't it be s/save/extend/

~~~
yiyus
no

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harel
(silly) Price aside, why is it only for iPhones? Surely the bigger market is
Android devices... or both... I see a similar trend with docking
station/speakers. I've yet to find a model that has a dock for micro usb. All
of them are iPhone centric with an optional cable to the headphone jack of
other phones.

~~~
gambiting
Bigger market with Android devices? Very few Android phones will get even
close to what any of the iPhone models sold. And docks for iphones are a lot
more interesting, because there is an established standard for controlling iOS
devices externally, which works with music and many many iOS apps. Not to
mention, that for both 30-pin and Lightning connectors the device playing the
music is the iphone, not the dock. With Micro USB the only way to do anything
would be to access the filesystem and play all the music files found. But
that's incredibly difficult, because of different standards, root Android
directory being polluted with files for apps, and there is no way to control
apps on the phone. Android phones are horrible for standards - mine doesn't
even work with a regular remote(next/back + mic) on my headphones.

~~~
anonymfus
This is not true, most modern Android devices support USB audio class as "very
strictly recommended" in _Android Compatibility Definition Document_ and
everything supports USB HID devices. Just implement USB sound card and USB
keyboard to play music and control it.

~~~
gambiting
In that case - fair enough. But we are yet to see a single dock which would
support this.

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jPaolantonio
Does anyone know if the screen is only configured via their app?

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jbverschoor
Reason to buy for me: read an ebook in the sunlight.

~~~
aakilfernandes
If these perform well, it might be the perfect reason to move to a phablet
sized device. I don't really need the extra real estate for my phone, but I'd
need it for reading.

