"reMarkable says the screen has 55ms latency for quick response from pen input"
55ms would be impressive for an LCD. Even the iPad Pro has a latency of 60ms [1]. So a 55ms claim for an E Ink panel? Should raise one's alarm detector.
I'll bite... their claim of 55ms is most likely for a tiny region to be updated. It is not for the whole screen. You'll notice in their video that full page updates are still slow.
I've worked w/ e-ink technology and designed similar hardware before. Here is how they work:
You scan across the matrix, setting the row/column multiplexer to the dots you want and flip the dots between black and white as needed. This flip is a physical process and has an inherent latency. You can't move to the next pixel until you've finished flipping this one.
The flipping process is basically applying a high positive or negative voltage to the tiny plate under the pixel, which causes either the positive or negative side (black or white) of the embedded dot to show. The amount of voltage you apply determines the intensity. If you want crisp edges and accurate shades of gray then the voltage also depends on manufacturing characteristics of that specific panel. E-Ink actually gives you a waveform for each panel they hip, and that waveform is also temperature dependant -- because the liquid the dots are suspended in changes viscosity based on temp.
So you can do a bit of simple calculation and determine the voltage to go from say 25% gray to 55% gray. This is faster because normally you'd go to either black or white and then to your target shade. This is why you see that screen "flashing" when there is a full page change.
To bring it all back... if you only need to update a small region, say the area around the tip of the pixel, you can do so relatively quickly -- compared to the whole screen -- hence their 55ms claim.
Personally, I noticed a fair bit of latency in their video.
As an experiment for a previous project we rolled our own FPGA based driver and were able to get small region update down to about 20ms.
> we rolled our own FPGA based driver and were able to get small region update down to about 20ms.
That is very impressive. 20ms latency from the time a pen hits the display to the point that a pixel is drawn on an EPD is twice as fast as an iPad Pro is able to do it on an LCD! Any links to your project?
> After a few trials I measured an approximate latency for the iPad Pro of roughly 49ms or 3 frames of delay,
From your linked article, the iPad is faster than you say. This is also in the Photoshop Sketch app. It's faster in other apps.
> To give an idea for how much the application has an effect on latency, the Apple Notes app has roughly 38 ms or around 2 frames of latency from when the stylus tip passes over one point to when the inking reaches the same point.
> no, we don't use Android, unlike pretty much everyone else.
Most companies making EPD products use the base OS provided by their SoC vendor. Based on your spec which says 1GHz ARM A9 , I'm guessing you're using the NXP (formerly Freescale, now Qualcomm) i.mx6 SoloLite since that's the only 1GHz ARM A9 with an EPDC controller on the market. Freescale gives you a Linux EPD and an Android EPD Linux BSP, both of which use the same epdc driver with pretty much the same latency which is definitely pretty high, much higher than 55ms for sure.
> EPD is designed by e ink based on our requirements, e. g. the size and high DPI
Are you claiming that E Ink manufactured a custom 10.3" panel just for you?
Again, I can't discuss too many technical details. But yes, it's an i.MX6SL, I thought we mentioned that on the web page.
And there are actually several drivers for the EPDC available. Two from freescale for the imx6 and imx7 (though there are some other improvements in the _v2, apart from imx7 support). There's also another one written by lab126, but I'm not sure if they actually use it. there's also some minor variations in the drivers in the different kernel branches and trees from NXP. And then you have the u-boot drivers. And I think there might be one in the bare metal SDK, but I haven't looked. And then you have the 5bit waveform support, which is a whole other story (with iffy GPL implications for some vendors I won't name).
And the display was designed based on our requirements, but we don't have any kind of exclusivity on it. there's already other devices coming out with it (you can find them if you google the specs, especially the awkward resolution we got thanks to the limits of the technology and our DPI requirement).
> you have the 5bit waveform support, which is a whole other story (with iffy GPL implications for some vendors I won't name).
I don't understand what you're trying to communicate. Why would a EPD waveform have any GPL implications? An EPD waveform is not software, it is a set of timing values and that's it.
> the display was designed based on our requirements
I'm having difficulty understanding what that means. It sounded like you were saying E Ink designed a panel for you, but maybe what you're saying is just that E Ink had a panel that met your requirements.
there are two epdc drivers in the kindle gpl releases. the source for the lab126 one is only available in the tarballs you linked (named mxc_epdc_fb_lab126.c).
as for the waveforms, I'm talking about support for the REAGL (sic) waveforms. grep for it in the linux source in the tarballs you linked to.
and e ink did not have a panel that met our requirements, and designed a new one after we talked with them.
edit; just to be clear, we don't use the lab126 driver, it was just an example of there being more drivers for the imx6 generation epdc.
The goodereader 13" is android, ReMarkable isn't. And the gooderader project has not turned to vapour yet althought I can understand linuxkerneldev's reason for being annoyed.
"Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service"
Imagine for a company only five years back to literally say that your thoughts are sent to their server. I welcome any product that understand we need less distractions and less help from so-called AI, but there are many reasons to be cautious about this one (preorder, latency claim and lack of technical details being some of them).
EDIT: After looking a bit more around, their technical claims does seem credible. Their CTO is/was even a developer at KDE, so let's hope they also will support open standards and personal servers. If so then it's literally the device I've always been dreaming of!
the reason we're a bit scant on technical details so far is partly because we have spent most of our technical resources on actually making the device. but we'll try to get out a more technical blog post soon.
another reason is that we can't share too much about what we're working on in case some journalist picks up some wording as promising some feature we can't deliver on. a lot of the stuff we're working on is stuff we don't know if we can deliver in time, in a polished enough form. so what we're talking about is what we have already solved, and which we believe is going to sell the device best to the people we target.
lastly, Certain Companies that have tried to do this for years are really, really interested in how we have solved the latency problem, and we don't want to help them.
EDIT:
> Their CTO is/was even a developer at KDE
is, thank you very much (latest commit was to kio on saturday). even if I don't have as much time for KDE stuff as I used to for obvious reasons.
Great to hear from you guys directly! I guess we (i.e techie internet folks, you included) have been served so many crowd funded promises that it's difficult to believe things that are too good to be true. Although I'm personally a big advocate of keeping stuff open, I do understand that a small company has to have some secrets for themselves.
Now I see you're also a developer at KDE which certainly gives credibility to your statements! But on the same note I truly hope the information from the device will be encrypted on your server, and that an opt-out of this sync will be possible. And if there will be support for Owncloud or the like, you've literally made my dream device!
I truly understand and support that you don't promise stuff that aren't really made yet, and I really hope the privacy concerns will be taken as serious as they are.
> I guess we (i.e techie internet folks, you included) have been served so many crowd funded promises that it's difficult to believe things that are too good to be true.
well, I personally have basically stopped contributing to crowdfunding campaigns, I've been burnt a lot. and this is also why we haven't gone public earlier, even when we've been working on this for years.
> I truly understand and support that you don't promise stuff that aren't really made yet, and I really hope the privacy concerns will be taken as serious as they are.
well, privacy is very important to me personally (I even have a couple of commits in owncloud), and we've been discussing several ways to protect the privacy. but until we know which way we do it we can't promise anything, even just speculating will lead to people assuming and get angry if we go for something else.
I appreciate your approach of avoiding speculation (apart from the mass-production uncertainties) and I've just pre-ordered. I have a couple LCD pen tablets (Samsung Note 10 and Surface Pro 3, apart from a USB Wacom Intuos 3) and a Kobo Aura H₂O, and your device looks like something I'd use often.
Just to give you a little feedback, I don't expect any reply for now:
- if the cloud sync can not be disabled I'll just nuke the packets at the router, but I suspect the option will be there.
- I want the SDK (mentioned as possible in your FAQ), unofficial-void-your-warranty all the way to the moon if you want, to have a programmable scientific calculator (maybe with Computer Algebra System functionality if I find the time) on this device. Having to build a complete firmware image in my laptop (Linux) and flashing it just to install my application is acceptable, simply uploading the file as if it was a PDF is better.
these uncertainties is why we hired Dragon Innovation early on. they're very, very good at this and has a very good track record when it comes to hardware startups (e. g. pebble and makerbot).
Funny you should mention Pebble, a company currently in its death throes. I hope reMarkable survives longer than they do, since I have now pre-ordered from both companies.
> One of the issues I personally want to solve is the lack of a hackable e-paper device.
So which is it? You want to make a hackable (I interpret that to mean free and open source) e-paper device where you let everyone see how you solved the latency problem? OR do you want to make a closed source thing where only you and you alone have this magical device that has the lowest latency E Ink panel by a factor of 2?
it won't take many weeks (or days) from we release the device until our solution is reverse engineered, no matter how much we lock it down. but until then we want to keep as much as possible secret.
as for hackable device; we don't intend to release the magic sauce that makes the latency goes down. what I meant with hackable is that I've wanted an e-paper device which I could run my own code on, without having to look for security holes in the software running on it.
but again; we can't promise anything at this point wrt. hackability; we have limited time and resources, and our focus is on making the device as good as possible. our focus is not on making an open source device, we're not going to release the gerber files. :-)
> we don't intend to release the magic sauce that makes the latency goes down.
Ok.
> what I meant with hackable is that I've wanted an e-paper device which I could run my own code on, without having to look for security holes in the software running on it.
If your software is closed source, then I don't understand how anyone other than you effectively (or practically) would be able to solve or fix any security holes.
> we're not going to release the gerber files
You're setting up a strawman there. I was not asking for your hardware design or even mentioning it in anyway. I was pointing out that you are contradicting yourself when you say your product is hackable to software developers and then 30s later say that there will be "magic sauce" in software that will be closed.
> If your software is closed source, then I don't understand how anyone other than you effectively (or practically) would be able to solve or fix any security holes.
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant that for pretty much all current e-paper devices you aren't able to get access to run your own code unless you find a security hole that you can exploit to gain access.
And sorry about the strawman, it wasn't intended that way. I think the rest of the comment before that answers your original question.
> I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant that for pretty much all current e-paper devices you aren't able to get access to run your own code unless you find a security hole that you can exploit to gain access.
Ok. That helps clarify things.
But on your website, you do not state that your device will permit flashing "your own code". Your website somewhat implies the opposite, it says:
"
DO YOU PROVIDE THE REMARKABLE WITH A SDK FOR CUSTOM DEVELOPMENT?
The reMarkable will not initially ship with an officially supported SDK. We might however release an unsupported SDK for best developers.
"
Could you clarify what "might" and "best developers" means? In multiple comments, you somewhat imply capabilities and features of the product with terms like "hackable" and "run your own code". Perhaps you could put an explicit statement on your website clarifying your position to match your comments.
I'm not trying to imply anything, but what I personally want and what we can do are two different things. I'm sorry if I've been sloppy in my comments here, the last days have been pretty hectic.
I'm one of the guys working on this. We make money on the product, storing this stuff actually costs us.. So we have no intentions of syncing more than you would want to :)
There's some tech specs on the site (getremarkable.com)
For some of us, not being able to turn off sync makes it a no buy (or for work a cannot buy). I hope it will not be required because this device looks interesting.
I have to concur with the others. Sync to the cloud is pretty much the last feature I would want; that would make this device forbidden by default without IT approval in pretty much any business or other professional environment I can think of. Imagine if a doctor bought one and took notes on your device. Is your cloud storage solution HIPAA compliant?
Save the notes to local storage and let me transfer them to a computer locally.
Also would like to sync to cloud of our choosing. Dropbox, box, one drive, adobe cloud, etc. I am not a fan of having to use a million cloud services these days.
Why is this even a question, seriously? The cloud shouldn't be the first option - I'm immediately turned off by this product if that is how its going to work.
Yup. I want to be able to run the cloud service on my own hardware.
Now, if they offered actually-secure client-side encryption (with no backdoors or sidechannels to strip said encryption, unlike e.g. Mozilla do with their accounts), then I might still be interested, but I'd still rather run it on my own hosts.
They use a protocol where they never have access to your password (and the secrecy of all the data they store for you hinges on the secrecy of your password), which sounds awesome, except that they serve a webpage to handle logins to their accounts, which means they can (& can be compelled to) serve you JavaScript which sends them your password out-of-band.
These two factors (all secrecy depending on your password and their ability to get your password) mean if you can remember your password, then Mozilla can brute-force your password, and if you have a strong password (e.g. 7HlipLbGliwUmUdWHKeq4p), then Mozilla can — or can be compelled to — serve you targeted JavaScript and steal it.
> Imagine for a company only five years back to literally say that your thoughts are sent to their server.
Well, now or five years ago, no one had the mind reading technology to say that, literally.
However, it's worth noting that Chromebooks were introduced five and a half years ago, so for a company introducing a device line to say that your work would be synced that way 5 years ago isn't something you have to work hard to imagine, if you were paying any attention at the time.
What I would consider the killer features for this, if present (as in, if guaranteed these, I would buy it):
- The ability to use it as a drawing tablet for another computer. It's already a perfectly good large touch-sensitive surface meant for drawing, why should I need to buy a second one for Illustrator?
- ssh, and some way to connect an external keyboard. E-paper is excellent for a terminal, and this is big enough to be useful.
- Some way to use purely as a display, whether by some plug or by X-server broadcasting via SSH or some form of screen-sharing client. Most non-video uses of a computer (if color is not crucial) work just fine on e-paper.
- The ability to turn off cloud-sync. Sorry, but I'm not sending you everything I write. For some people that might even go deeper than a personal choice (NDAs, if they work on anything proprietary, depending on how they're phrased).
So, basically, the ability to use it for its components and not just the singular agglomeration of them that you envision. I put that above even the ability to write your own software for it.
In other words, if ReMarkable has the following, I would have already pre-ordered, even if it's got nothing else:
- an e-paper touch display
- plus Wi-Fi, USB, HDMI, etc.
- the ability to disable automatic cloud sync
- with four built-in programs:
-- ssh
-- drivers-for-use-as-drawing-tablet
-- VNC client
-- The reader/drawing program demonstrated in the video, for use alone
I've tried the prototype device, and I'm very excited that this is finally coming to market!
That said, and it might be nitpicky of me, but the choice of micro-USB for charging is a real annoyance. This is a premium device at a premium price point which I'm expecting to keep for many years. USB-C for portable devices is something that I'm considering a must-have at this point. Will probably wait for the first hardware revision.
the reasons we decided against usb c are a) the device would have to be thicker, b) our industrial designer didn't like how it would look, and most importantly; c) I still have a hard time finding usb c cables. I always have to bring my own.
As for point C: I fully believe that the opposite will be the case in three years time. Just feels a bit... shortsighted. I mean, even Nintendo is going for USB-C in their upcoming device (and even Apple, in their own hamfisted way :P )
Wow, the latency looks really bad. You would think that by August 2017 we would be down to sub-frame latency for stylus input. At this point, I would rather use a stylus with a cord if it meant shaving off 10ms. As is, it's just unusable. I know for people that have been in the tablet-input world for a while, 50ms sounds reasonable, but hand this to a kid, and they'll start drawing all over the screen, waiting for the lines to catch up.
I'll be interested in this when the latency and DPI can keep up with the pace of natural handwriting.
What if the display sub system organized the screen into partitions and prioritized the redraws based on which partition the input was happening in? If that's where the eye is focused, then maybe any artifact from refresh-neglect in the periphery would go unnoticed.
I really want this to succeed. I'd love to buy one. There's been quite a few failed attempts.
From FAQ
> own special operating system Codex / We might however release an unsupported SDK for best developers
That's disappointing. I assume "best developers" means corporates. I'd have hoped for a fully open SDK as you're not able to use anything from Android etc. There's probably no end of utilities solo coders would piece together. I'd probably be looking at whether I could make a few apps myself.
I'm a little disappointed at no lighting, it's made a big difference to my eReader. No doubt LEDs would add much to cost.
"best developers" was a bit tongue in cheek, it was late and I didn't have time to come up with good wording (I'm not a good word person). but what I tried to convey; we know that even _if_ we can release a toolchain, we can't deliver a full, polished SDK. so "best developers" was more about developers that don't need any hand-holding.
but again; we can't even promise that we have the time and resources to package up a usable toolchain for third-parties.
of course, one of the nice things with modern hardware is that we can deliver more features after shipping the device.
edit; also, it is a device connected to the internet. not supporting updating the firmware would be extremely irresponsible from a security perspective.
I really like the idea. But I don't much care for it syncing to the vendor's cloud server. If it would sync in open file formats to my NextCloud instance, then that's attractive.
Also, there's definitely a balance to be struck between lack of distraction and lack of features. It would be a waste for this not to have an epub reader, for example. But while I'd really appreciate having email on it, that's starting to get into distraction territory.
about epub, that's one format we're already committed to supporting. it's listed in the FAQ. we're very careful about not over-promising, that's partly why there aren't more features listed.
edit; really besides the point, but saw your nick. our internal name for the prototype (in u-boot and the kernel) is zero-gravitas.
except we waited until we had actual hardware prototypes before going public, from an ODM we've been working on for a while. and (some of our team) are on HN, which gives us much more street cred.
and you can find pictures of us. one of the reasons I've been skeptical about the noteslate is because I couldn't really find out who was making it.
we went to CES this year to see if there was any reason for us to go, but based on that we decided not to. it's insanely huge and hard to get any kind of exposure, even if people knew about us beforehand.
but seeing is believing, especially with this product, videos doesn't do it justice imho. so we need some way of getting it into the hands of people, probably some kind of ambassadors that have some reach and a lot of integrity. but this has to wait until our ODM finishes the next batches of prototypes, so we actually have devices that we can send out.
Sad thing is that Sony was meant to be going global in '13. It's probably well overdue a v2 by now!
Think they're down to about $700 now. Any on ebay and Amazon are from Japan with no English!!
Looked at these a few times hoping they were going on wider release. With Sony out of eBooks, and selling off Vaio, doesn't look promising for a replacement.
they've been dumping the price and trying to empty their warehouses, so I'm not sure if you can actually buy it anymore. at least not outside of japan.
If your device works well as a PDF annotator, it's going to have a huge market among academics, who right now have a number of very bad solutions to the problem. For me personally, I'm thrilled by the possibility of being able to write unlimited marginalia.
This looks amazing. If you don't mind, I have a couple questions...
- I know you're not committing to certain things at this time, but can you confirm yet that a subscription fee will NOT be required for full usage? Ie. If I want to store locally or on Dropbox or Google Drive would something like that be possible? I hesitate to preorder without knowing how your full pricing model might be structured.
- Is the stylus unique to the device, or will any old stylus work? Also, will it need to be charged separately?
- Will there be the possibility of low frame rate animations? I could see that being super useful for diagrams.
- Can you share any insights into the current state of eInk technology with regards to color displays? Is it looking like something that might be commercially viable in the next 5 years? 10?
- As you acknowledge, this tech will likely be copied pretty quickly. How do you build a business moat around that?
Awesome stuff and excited to see how this turns out.
That looks rather lovely. The smart paper tablet that some of us have always wanted.
"Better thinking" might be an overstatement, but it is quite a hassle to doodle on a computer, and I do find that I think slightly differently while handwriting.
Hi. I am a paper guy too. Until this thing hits the market wide, gets lots of positive reviews and has its costs reduced, does anyone have tips for managing lots of real paper? I feel like some organization tricks could help ease dealing with paper problems.
I use paper to sketch out thoughts and draw diagrams, and I don't want unlimited papers. 5 pages a day is enough for me. I wish I could say I read books - I don't. So I only have to manage papers on which I write things and refer to them quickly whenever possible. It works fine, but if someone has tips to help, please share. Thanks.
For a long time I tried to come up with systems for paper. Now I switched to a simpler model: my (only) clipboard I used for the project I focus one, eg. writing my master thesis.
I also bought two thin soft binders. The green one is for research and ideas highly related to my current research or projects. I put some metadata on some of the sheet themselves or on small papers to remind quickly what a sheet is about. The red one is for other all other ideas.
Any sheet not is a binder will likely roam on one of my desks and will be forgotten. This is actually a feature, like survival of the fittest applied to desk environment.
This is huge! I don't want to sound contemptuous but to me, paper feels like an inefficient artefact, just waiting to be disrupted by something that can incorporate the few remnant benefits which current range of E-Readers don't cover. I have had Kindle since about an year and I can't imagine ever going to paper books. I can instantly check words, read in the dark, or purchase whenever I like. The only thing I do miss is marking an important passage.
If notes, and highlighting work as advertised, will printed books have anything to offer other than aesthetic value?
I understand the pen doesn't attach in any way to the device? Only the Folio does attempt to help keeping them together?
The movies don't seem to do a good job of demonstrating the advertised pressure and tilt sensitivity levels; I didn't seem to notice any variation in line width.
It would be awesome if you could make Stylus Labs Write (http://www.styluslabs.com/) work on your device — or at least steal the ideas (esp. text moving) for your writing app.
Very much want one, if it materializes I will feel very jealous of today's college students. This would have been a godsend, I would take notes in class, but organizing them was always a pain. I've lost several class notes I wish I kept.
Will hold out until actual products are given to the public, I've seen several pitches for this that haven't materialized. Best of luck though, I will be waiting.
I too struggle (and fail) to keep physical papers organised. But I'm not sure why electronic papers should be any easier? Unless there's some amazing software that can recognise content automatically...
Just tags plus dates would be enough to a very long way to making things much easier to organize. I know I made some notes after that meeting in October and I know I probably tagged the note with something like 'CFD' and/or 'wind'. Show me all the notes that match those criteria and I'll probably recognize the notes I'm looking for in less than a minute.
I mean physically, having to move several times and being too crammed while taking classes, I have lost several classes of notes. Digitally it's always on dropbox/gdrive.
just to clear up any possible confusion; don't expect text recognition.
it's probably the most requested feature, but it's a really, really hard problem.
but please send me a message at martin.sandsmark@remarkable.no if anyone have any tips about solutions to this (we're talking with a couple of vendors, but we might have missed some).
FroshKiller is right, a good search feature would make this device much more useful.
Regarding that I do have a 'tip' for you. There is no need for an intermediate textual representation. If a sequence of pen strokes is what you have recorded, then a sequence of pen strokes is what you should search by.
For further tips (or an algorithm) I have to charge :)
While you have certainly made huge and impressive improvements, I still don't think I could call that "solved". I think any latency is still going to put people off when it comes to writing on this vs. paper.
our goal for solving it was to get it down to where it wasn't a detriment for the writing and sketching experience. one of the first things we did was gather data and read what research there was on what kind of latency was noticeable and lead to writing feeling "wrong".
so we solved our goal, but it's always possible to get better.
So obviously without actually trying one myself I can't say that you are incorrect, but certainly the demo video you provided still has a feeling of wrongness. Its like with animation, we're still stuck in the uncanny valley but you are definitely climbing out of it.
this is one of the reasons we need to get this in the hands of some kind of ambassadors that can test for themselves and give us some validation. imho the video doesn't do it much justice.
I'm hoping to see more and more e-ink offerings. For myself, I would like a 50" curved e-ink monitor for work, black and white is fine. I know e-ink has terrible refresh rates, but I'm working with code and consoles 90% of the time. I could put web browsers and other stuff on another monitor.
I find the idea of using the most advanced VR technology for your olde command line terribly funny. All those 80s cyberpunks imagining people actually traveling through cyber-information highways, using them in combination with feedback gloves to browse and actuate on the information in a myriad ways... And we just want a command line. I'd love to go back in time to tell them that this is a major use of VR and see the abject horror in their faces.
Believe it or not, this is a product that could save an incredible number of lives over time, by allowing us to spend more time outdoors:
http://sunlightinstitute.org/research-studies/
Yeah but paper blows around and is hard to control in non-controlled environments. If I brought a full notepad with me, I'd have to worry about wind and humidity. A plastic device won't be as light as paper, nor as fragile.
I got rid of 600 pounds of paper this year in one go. Used bookstores got most of it. Took a couple months. Don't want more, just in case I have to move, if nothing else.
This is simply awesome! For a long time I have waited for tablets to actually incorporate the most natural way for making notes and generally working with paper. Not going to preorder (waiting 8 months is kind of too long for me), but probably going to buy just after it comes out.
we can't release more technical details than what is on the webpage for now, we're still working on the performance. but to give you a rough idea on where we are on UI responsiveness and loading times, this is what we're using for targets: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-...
and the digitizer is an EMR digitizer, completely separate from the touch layer. so we don't have to worry about palm rejection.
edit; you can see the speed of the zoom in the video, which also needs to re-render the page at a different scale. so that should give you an idea about the speed of page flipping.
For me, the keypoint is the haptic feeling. As a mechanical keyboard enthusiast, for me the physical "feeling" of the things I use in daily life is a very important and underrated aspect.
Most of the time I find myself switching between my pencil/notebook and google docs. The feel of the pencil on the notebook, the friction, the feeling of pressing on the notebook is a matter of satisfaction which we cannot find on tablets. On the other hand, the flexibility of digital stuff is a must.
With iPhone 7, I am satisfied with the haptic feeling of pressing a button. A similar achievement on a surface would be revolutionary.
I am a total paper person. I have notebooks, upon notebooks and still use a paper planner. I could get excited about this once it starts shipping.
If you have an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil, I recently started using Nebo (by MyScript) and it is working well for me. Handwriting, multiple notebooks, etc. You must have an Apple Pencil to use the app.
For now, none of this will replace my paper, but I am hopeful someday.
ReMarkable Team - I'd love to share how I use paper everyday in hopes some of my specifics make it into your product :-)
This is a lot closer, but still too far off the mark. It's still orders of magnitude inferior in terms of lag, convenience, and reliability, while being orders of magnitude more expensive.
Thinking about the iPhone briefly, I think the Steve Jobs formula is to wait until the device can be less than an order of magnitude more expensive, only half as convenient, and about as reliable as the thing it's displacing. I'm also wondering if Microsoft did actually make the right long term decision with regards to its Surface line of hardware.
The iPhone was much more convenient in a new context: having access to your data in your pocket, all the time. It was a worse cellphone, with regards to charging and call reception. However, it was good enough as a cellphone, and it enabled something else.
Can you talk about the resolution on the device? On the video, it looked to be fairly low, probably lower than the Kindle PaperWhite which I have. I'd be really interested in this for reading PDF's papers and PDF tech books, but only if the text isn't too jaggy.
If I understand the eink tech correctly, large hi-dpi screens will have very poor screen redrawing properties. Something about how the individual "pixels" get toggled in series.
What is the bottleneck on eInk display refresh rate? Is it a fundamental limitation of the tech, or is the slow refresh rate of devices like the Kindle a power-saving feature?
E-paper (E-Ink is a brand name) works by magnetically moving small black or white particles (suspended in fluid) for each pixel whenever it needs to change. It's a bit like an etch-a-sketch, it's an analog system at the low level. At minimum, the movement takes time. Also, the current state of the pixel affects the charge that needs to be applied for a given target state - that means either taking more time to calculate, getting an afterimage, or doing that whole-screen black-white flicker to clear everything out. Probably all three due to precision limits.
Yes, it's a fundamental limitation. Changing colors means moving tiny bits of magnetic dust, and the amount of charge needed is based on where they currently are. This takes more calculation than just running electricity through a light, which can be done regardless of whether or not you were running electricity through it a moment ago. This extra calculation will always take more time, unless the simpler tech reaches a fundamental physical limit like how fast power can be cycled without something melting.
If anyone feels like supporting this project, but doesn't think they'd actually use such a device, let me know, I'd happily accept one to test / use / etc.
I've been waiting for this with a microphone as a LiveScribe replacement. That mythical device would never leave my side. Please consider for version 2.
the primary reason i purchased an kobo aura one is the red led back light, so i can read at night without messing with my sleep cycle. it's a killer feature. you'd be wise to consider it.
I think it's a very compelling product if it delivers what it advertises. Unless you're talking about a kindle your tablet most certainly isn't better when it comes to reading which seems to be a significant portion of the product's features - as much as I like my iPad, reading on such a display for long periods of time is a subpar experience.
For me it is about having one device that focusses one one well defined task and does that well. To minimize destractions. A tablet can do so much that I'd be tempted to do a lot of other things except reading (and scribbling).
I can see myself being in the target market (sw/hw developer) - while much of my day-to-day work takes place on a computer, I still rely on pen and paper for early sketches/brainstorming and the like, leading to an office with (quite literally!) hundreds of notebooks on the shelves.
If it feels sufficiently paper-y to write on and PDF exporting is seamless-y and with at least a rudimentary tagging function, I'd probably buy one.
I see no evidence that the team behind this "remarkable" product has ever completed anything of this scale.
Some of the claims are very suspicious. https://liliputing.com/2016/11/remarkable-10-3-inch-writing-...
"reMarkable says the screen has 55ms latency for quick response from pen input"
55ms would be impressive for an LCD. Even the iPad Pro has a latency of 60ms [1]. So a 55ms claim for an E Ink panel? Should raise one's alarm detector.
[1] http://www.anandtech.com/show/9766/the-apple-ipad-pro-review...