Product questions that I couldn't find an answer to. From https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-flow, I see "On the go, you can power Flow at up to 40 Hz with a single USB Type-C cable. At a desk, you can connect additional power and take advantage of its full 60 Hz refresh rate."
1) This surprises me a bit... is USB-PD incompatible with DisplayPort alt mode, or is this just based on an observation that display port devices tend to give limited power output?
2) Is every DisplayPort alt mode host able to give enough power to run at 40 Hz? In particular, can this be driven on the go directly from an iPhone?
3) Is that second USB port usable as a data port hubbed to the device when powering over the DisplayPort port?
4) I know it's possible to provide power from the display back to the host device when using DisplayPort alt mode -- when powering the display from the second USB-C port, is the connected device also powered?
The two use cases that would be super interesting to me is plugging this in to my iPhone or similar on-the-go, and plugging a USB-C keyboard into the second port on it for quick e-mails at the coffee shop and similar; and plugging this in to an iPhone, plugging my power bank into the monitor and keeping the monitor in high-power mode and the iPhone charging while working with a Bluetooth keyboard.
Obviously I don't expect it to handle these use cases out of the box, but... open source! This is really a question about what the hardware design is capable of, not the current software/firmware/FPGA capabilities.
nzach 1 days ago [-]
This link is way more interesting than the original ieee.
Upvoted them both. I’m an ECE prof, and the video summed up why working with students is so rewarding.
deepspace 18 hours ago [-]
I was watching the video the other day, and my jaw dropped. Wenting is a display-technology beast. Watch his other videos too; he seems to be able to squeeze every last bit of possible performance out of every kind of display, and then some.
adolph 1 days ago [-]
Wow, I'm glad to see that person is getting some more recognition for this work.
A claim in the video that I can't verify but makes economic/logistic sense is that the speed problem isn't the panels but the controllers. The current crop of controllers are optimized for low power, which fits the e-reader use case but that is not optimal for the interactive use case.
freewestpapua 17 hours ago [-]
> A claim in the video that I can't verify but makes economic/logistic sense is that the speed problem isn't the panels but the controllers.
I don't understand the claim. It is lacking in specifics. Are they claiming that electrophoretic materials (meaning the panels) can actually switch (meaning move pigments) faster than say x.y micrometers per second? I don't think that is true. The article shows that what Wenting did ("binary transition") is pretty much the same as what companies like Dasung did. Instead of trying to have grayscale, it is faster to hit somewhat-black and somewhat-white and give the illusion of fast movement than actual fast movement.
adolph 5 hours ago [-]
> Are they claiming that electrophoretic materials (meaning the panels) can actually switch (meaning move pigments) faster than say x.y micrometers per second?
No, I think the claim is that the controllers are slower that what the panels can theoretically support.
jolmg 23 hours ago [-]
> The current crop of controllers are optimized for low power, which fits the e-reader use case but that is not optimal for the interactive use case.
Why try to contort the technology for something it's not good at, instead of using a more appropriate technology like transflective LCDs? Eink isn't the only option for reflective displays. If you increase the power use of eink to get better refresh rates, I imagine you'd end up using more power than (and still end up with lower refresh rates than) an MIP display.
I don't understand the growth of the market as a whole for eink monitors, when tLCDs exist and are disappearing from the market.
enragedcacti 22 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure e-ink has a much higher ceiling for reflectance than TLCDs/RLCDs, so you'll be able to use it comfortably without a frontlight in a lot more situations which could more than make up for increased power usage. I think they are also naturally better in terms of glare compared to any type of LCD.
Groxx 21 hours ago [-]
Viewing angles are also fantastic compared to almost all T/R LCDs - they tend to be fairly directional. It's a great display tech for many things that don't need 60+fps.
manwe150 15 hours ago [-]
And contrast ratio seems far higher to add on to the benefits. I want to like reflective displays, and there are many new ones lately too, but they just fall a bit short, especially if they try to do color
ThrowawayR2 2 hours ago [-]
I'm currently reading your post on a transflective LCD monitor. The problem with them is the very low contrast ratio which requires very high ambient illumination to make them readable or other workarounds like what they did for the Daylight DC-1.
nomel 18 hours ago [-]
I think the coolest display tech was Mirasol.
Uses flipping wave interference for color. So cool. How do you make black? Easy! Humans can't see UV! :D
It isn't clear to me that eink's underlying display technology isn't good at the interactive computing use case so much as the implementations aren't optimized for it. There could be a position where more power than an eink reader is used but still far less than traditional active displays since unchanged pixels aren't driven.
alex-a-soto 21 hours ago [-]
That's how I think about it too.
E-readers are vertically integrated devices: the hardware, software, UI, and refresh behavior are all tailored around reading. E-ink tablets like reMarkable are similar, but optimized around writing and annotation.
A traditional monitor is much more general-purpose, so it doesn't get the same kind of end-to-end optimization for the display medium. I think there's room for an in-between category: a more interactive e-ink device where both the hardware and software are designed around the strengths and limits of the panel.
There's some related work happening in this direction:
It should be good enough for interactive use, but not for watching movies.
In TFA it is said that for these new faster panels the transition time of a pixel is around 50 ms. This is comparable with some old LCDs.
techwizrd 1 days ago [-]
I found the video on YouTube before the IEEE article. It's a fascinating story.
empalms 22 hours ago [-]
Been casually following the ePaper/eInk device space for years now and Modos is one of the more exciting developments I've come across in the space. Seriously impressive.
That said, I'm curious what impact the increased refresh rate might have on a Carta panel's longevity. I assume the physical medium that allows each 'pixel' to be on/off has a certain tolerance after which the screen begins to degrade beyond a usable state.
Separately, I also want to understand more about how Wenting's approach differs (or not) from the flickering modern displays use to emit a picture, and, whether the direction actually addresses eye strain or reproduces the same issues (I'm assuming are) inherent in LCD/LED displays — i.e. it's the flickering that strains our eyes, not just light.
Maybe someone more versed than I am in this space would know. After 10+ years of computer work... my eyes hurt and I really want this to be a game changer.
alex-a-soto 22 hours ago [-]
In normal use, we don't expect fast refresh to significantly reduce an E Ink panel's lifetime.
The E Ink material itself is long-lived, the main stress is on the driving electronics and waveform behavior during refreshes. Our approach doesn't add extra refresh cycles, the display starts responding sooner, which improves perceived speed without adding extra refreshes.
So far, fast refresh hasn't been the dominant failure mode in our testing. Physical stress, bending, pressure, heat, and moisture are much larger risks.
On eye strain: E Ink is reflective and bistable, so a static image doesn't require continuously emitted light. Fast updates can still produce artifacts like flashing, dithering, or ghosting, but that's a different issue from a display that continuously flickers.
So I'd say this addresses an important part of the problem, though comfort will vary by person.
Also I recommend checking out the following resources:
Between this, the Daylight computer (I know it's RLCD), and some of the flagship Boox devices, I'm very excited for where alternative display technology is going in the next couple years. Displays that you can use outside and that drain the battery way slower open up so many possibilities for auxiliary devices. My ideal device would be an ultralight android tablet with a keyboard case and an outdoor display good enough to watch youtube on, that needs to be charged less than once per day. Hopefully this product is super successful and Modos move on to standalone devices next.
There are counter trends, like Garmin discontinuing their e-paper smartwatches. But hopefully that has more to do with that market being too narrow for viable alternatives, and not a fundamental issue with the economics of the displays themselves.
afandian 1 days ago [-]
Pebble is back, with MIP reflective LCD. I have one. It's great.
Bangle.js 2 is the only smartwatch I've kept since Pebble. It's definitely not a polished experience, so I can only recommend with pretty strong caveats, but it has the main things I want from a tool: notifications, long battery life, easily-visible screen in all conditions, and isn't a giant slab on my wrist that gets in the way.
Nothing else has satisfied that so far, after trying nearly a dozen. They've all had flaky connections, bad battery life, and/or screens that need me to shield from the sun sometimes. And the apps they require, holy crap are they bad. Gadgetbridge isn't shiny but it at least lets you control what you need.
I truly wish it was button-based though. Touchscreens on your wrist suck so bad.
abrowne 21 hours ago [-]
> Touchscreens on your wrist suck so bad.
I don't mind myself, and especially in winter with mittens on I can – and often do – use my nose :-D
Groxx 19 hours ago [-]
I don't really mind having a touchscreen, it's the requiring use of it that bugs me.
And in some situations I much prefer it to be disabled, otherwise it reads phantom touches. (Bangle.js 2 has an option to ignore touches, though I forget the details. iirc until button press, or tapping a very small unlock button on the corner of the screen. Works well as a preventative measure, but I've never seen that on other watches)
afandian 21 hours ago [-]
Cool! I didn’t know it was transreflective. Do you have one? How’s the contrast?
Groxx 21 hours ago [-]
A bit low when not in a relatively bright area (say a house during the day without lights on), but that's largely solved by the backlight or a small tilt to catch light better. And in direct sunlight it's excellent.
The display isn't as nice as Pebble Time (fewer colors, more directional, overall slightly dimmer) but it's more than functional enough. Transflective is obviously the right choice for watches, I don't know why everything else has gone for phone-like panels that are often unreadable and kill battery life.
delecti 23 hours ago [-]
As a defense of Garmin, even without reflective/transflective/whatever displays (which would be better in sunlight), they still manage decent battery life. I can easily go a full week without charging mine, or several days with a daily ~1hr activity which uses GPS. It's certainly nothing compared to the ~month I managed on my previous watch, but plugging it in during my shower every few days totally eliminates battery anxiety, so I'm satisfied.
19 hours ago [-]
efskap 19 hours ago [-]
> Garmin discontinuing their e-paper smartwatches
Wait what? Do you have a source? I can't find anything about that, and I see the Instinct 3 is still being sold. Very disappointing if so, as that line has been the perfect pebble replacement for me.
pcchristie 19 hours ago [-]
Their flagship devices used to be split into two lines - Epix (AMOLED) or Fenix (MIP). The latest Fenixs (8 series) are AMOLED like the Epix, so you can't get MIP anymore in those lines. I can't speak to their other lines, frankly I've never understood their naming and what each line supposedly does.
efskap 18 hours ago [-]
Ah, thanks for clarifying. Fenix 8 Solar is still MIPS but I can see why AMOLED is the "premium default" that they'd de-emphasize in their flagships. MIPS just shines less in the showroom, and doesn't have the phone display parity people expect.
I can't see them ever removing it from the Instinct line though, as that's the rugged one that signals tool.
xnx 1 days ago [-]
> two-person startup is back fund-raising for Modos Flow, a 13.3-inch color e-paper monitor with a higher native resolution of 3,200 x 2,400, touch input, and a 60Hz refresh rate
Those are some mighty specs. Godspeed.
user_7832 1 days ago [-]
If I had the 600-odd dollars, I'd absolutely buy this. It's a damn shame it's so expensive.
acc_297 1 days ago [-]
I think the 600 dollar price is more than double the price of the same diplay as a mass-produced product it's a price for enthusiasts of the technology
and it's open source so nothing stops a bigger producer of copying the exact technology with institutional funding and manufacturing expertise
davebren 5 hours ago [-]
I wasted 2k on a color e-ink monitor that ended up being pretty much unusable. Reviews said as much but the risk was worth it to me for the chance to spend my days looking at something that doesn't feel like a screen. I believe it's an "if you build it they will come" thing especially for anyone working on a computer all day.
ndiddy 21 hours ago [-]
There is no mass market product with the same specifications. The closest equivalents from established companies are the Dasung Paperlike 13K and Bigme B13, both of which cost the same or more than the Modos.
sleepybrett 19 hours ago [-]
yeah i'm waiting for a 32" mass production model for this pricepoint.
unshavedyak 1 days ago [-]
I'd buy it but i want it in a laptop form or maybe tablet, or something. Being a monitor means the usefulness for me, ie being able to program outside, is kinda moot.
i think it's a portable 13in monitor, you can plug it into your phone or something if you want
unshavedyak 1 days ago [-]
Yea it's definitely portable, it's just not a friendly formfactor for where my compute sits, where my keyboard sits, etc. If i'm in a chair at the part i'd need a literal lap-top, three components (keyboard, compute, monitor) without a frame connecting them would make that difficult.
1 days ago [-]
throwaway219450 23 hours ago [-]
It's in the same ballpark as reMarkable's Pro offerings or the Supernote Manta (each are $4-500). e-ink is expensive. I went with Supernnote for the repairability even if it cost a bit extra.
ndiddy 21 hours ago [-]
I've seen these portable e-ink monitors available for nearly 10 years now, but this one seems to be the first that's responsive enough for general usage, which is a big step forward. Out of curiosity, if anyone here has one, what do you use it for? There must be something people are using them for if they've been a product niche for so long, but I can't think of what I would do with a standalone 13 inch e-ink monitor.
dleeftink 1 days ago [-]
> Don’t make yourself regret the things you didn’t do
Nothing to add, but it bears repeating. A shimmer of indie tech resilience
zero0529 9 hours ago [-]
Last time I read about them (here in HN) somebody highlighted that the problem wasn’t to get them to function at a high refresh rate, the problem is they stop being energy effecient at that rate. Now I mostly skimmed the article but I couldn’t find any information regarding that.
abrowne 5 hours ago [-]
I think that's true, but energy efficiency is only one potential benefit of epaper displays, and not one that is a goal with this product.
mikeweiss 1 days ago [-]
This paired with LLMs....Looks like we'll have harry potter magic portraits soon! You could have a conversation with a portrait on your wall....
dyauspitr 24 hours ago [-]
If you update that often it’s probably going to chew through the battery though.
billy_bitchtits 2 hours ago [-]
When will I be able to get a 35” color e ink display with this high refresh rate?
TheRealPomax 1 hours ago [-]
I just wish someone would look at the input side, too. I want true digital paper that I can draw on in real time already. Not the laggy nonsense that even stupidly overpowered tablets can't seem to get passed.
t23414321 22 hours ago [-]
Dimensions of monitor are: 315 x 254 x 16 mm
- but what are dimensions of visible screen ?
- is it enough to match A4 format 297 x 210 mm ?
locusofself 17 hours ago [-]
How awesome would it be if it was reasonably priced AND doubled as a large eReader ?
MrPapz 1 days ago [-]
The Crowd Supply website mentions the high power consumption but it would be great if I could connect it to a smartphone to work on the go!
joshu 20 hours ago [-]
i can't decide if i want the monochrome or color one
formvoltron 7 hours ago [-]
so if I get one... anyone know if it may stop working in the future when macos changes something? Or does it not require installed software drivers?
throwwwll 1 days ago [-]
Price?
nzach 1 days ago [-]
U$ 619 for the black and white model and U$ 719 for the color model
Not bad considering this is a niche specialty product and cutting edge. The price will come down if the demand and market grow. Assuming raw hardware costs stop rising
imglorp 1 days ago [-]
Will it? The whole e-ink market seems like it has never priced flexibly.
throwway120385 21 hours ago [-]
It never priced flexibly because the company that makes it kept a total stranglehold on the IP through patents and basically requires you to buy both the panel and the controller from them. I think it's actually quite a simple technology but I think it's tough for them to get the economies of scale they really need to be competitive as a display technology. I'm starting to see the older-style black and white eInk displays used as Electronic Shelf Labels more often now and I think it has to do with the patents finally expiring so you can buy the components from more than one supplier. The technology they're replacing, paper labels, costs thousands of dollars per week per store to update and more so when there are sale prices. The eInk displays cut most of those costs in favor of capital and then once in a blue moon battery replacements.
throwwwll 1 days ago [-]
thumbs down
acc_297 1 days ago [-]
that is almost guaranteed an at-cost production figure for the limited run of kickstarter funded displays there isn't a production line producing these things - watch the youtube video this guy quit his job for over a year to build a passion project into a prototype
borg16 1 days ago [-]
saw the video - that was so much better than this ieee link.
learnt a lot in the process too - kudos to him
smlacy 1 days ago [-]
So this is basically an advertisement for their product?
functionmouse 1 days ago [-]
Unfortunately the pen is probably USI, making it borderline useless as a pen. This will not be like S-pen or Apple Pencil.
alex-a-soto 1 days ago [-]
The stylus solution is provided by E Ink to us. E Ink made the switch from EMR to USI a few years ago, so most E Ink devices, including the Modos Flow are using USI now.
zipy124 1 days ago [-]
Although I can't find an authoritative source on it the indications do support that assumption that it is USI. Technically USI doesn't have to be bad, it just appears that quality control on the standard is bad (similarly to how USB cables often don't meet the spec and can cause troubles as a result).
Sure. But USI is bad unless the OEM goes out of their way to make it good, whereas EMR is good unless the OEM goes out of their way to make it bad. EMR is the better tech, and with patents expired, and numerous other benefits such as no batteries needed in the pen, it should be standard now.
varun_ch 1 days ago [-]
I think this device isn’t so much about a pen. It seems like it could be a really nice typing or coding or reading display. Maybe a future model could improve on the pen
WillAdams 1 days ago [-]
The thing is, to get a pen right, all that they have to do is license Wacom EMR/Samsung's S-Pen (Samsung owns a 40% stake in Wacom, hence using their stylus tech).
Styluses w/ batteries/capacitors were okay once upon a time, but Wacom EMR "just works" and makes my life simpler/nicer (I couldn't count how many styluses I have around my house/in my bags so as to allow me to use my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, Galaxy Note 10+, Kindle Scribe Coloursoft, and Wacom One display (attached to a MacBook).
functionmouse 1 days ago [-]
EMR patents and design specs expired. It's free. China's tooling simply hasn't caught up, because the output doesn't have to feel or work good, it simply has to look good in a kickstarter. Conjecture: I feel like this is like half the reason styluses as a technology are dying; the other half is the untimely death of the resistive display.
Bring back resistive touch!
WillAdams 1 days ago [-]
Radio frequency/compatibility seems to be a consideration --- also, don't understate the importance of tooling/tolerances even w/ Wacom overseeing things, I've had to return name-brand/licensed styluses which would not work consistently across all of my devices.
hgoel 1 days ago [-]
As a fellow EMR stylus enjoyer, which one do you prefer the most? The thin one in the phones tends to be too small to use comfortably and the one that comes with the Galaxy Book/tablets is decent (but the Galaxy Book has very inconsistent support for the buttons). The Wacom One stylus used to be my favorite, but lately I've been enjoying using the Kindle Scribe stylus/the fat Staedler stylus (I think they're both very similar in usage experience).
WillAdams 1 days ago [-]
My favourite stylus is the Staedtler Noris Digital Stylus which stands in for the classic #2 pencil quite nicely.
That said, these days, I mostly use the Premium Pen included w/ my first-gen Kindle Scribe, or a Wacom One stylus (where the Staedtler used to be, prompted by my chipping and cracking the screen on my GB3 and having to apply a screen protector --- the harder tip on the W1 being a better match).
The Staedtler Noris Jumbo is nice, but I wish it had a side switch. The pens bundled w/ my Samsung Galaxy Books (panic-bought a spare when the afore-mentioned screen incident happened) are fine, but I am annoyed that there's no silo (agree w/ Samsung being hobbled by their agreement w/ Wacom being annoying). Don't like the feel of the white Kindle Scribe Coloursoft stylus --- too rubbery.
My backup is a Lamy Safari Wacom EMR which I keep in my travel sling bag --- if I could justify a second, I'd probably EDC it and it would get promoted to favourite.
There are a few others which I've been meaning to try....
WillAdams 23 hours ago [-]
In the above, "rubbery" should read round, and the attribute "rubbery" applies to the eraser.
Palomides 1 days ago [-]
I think licensing anything from wacom or samsung is a big ask for a two person(?) project that's making a very small run of open source/open hardware devices
Rendered at 18:26:32 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Product questions that I couldn't find an answer to. From https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-flow, I see "On the go, you can power Flow at up to 40 Hz with a single USB Type-C cable. At a desk, you can connect additional power and take advantage of its full 60 Hz refresh rate."
1) This surprises me a bit... is USB-PD incompatible with DisplayPort alt mode, or is this just based on an observation that display port devices tend to give limited power output?
2) Is every DisplayPort alt mode host able to give enough power to run at 40 Hz? In particular, can this be driven on the go directly from an iPhone?
3) Is that second USB port usable as a data port hubbed to the device when powering over the DisplayPort port?
4) I know it's possible to provide power from the display back to the host device when using DisplayPort alt mode -- when powering the display from the second USB-C port, is the connected device also powered?
The two use cases that would be super interesting to me is plugging this in to my iPhone or similar on-the-go, and plugging a USB-C keyboard into the second port on it for quick e-mails at the coffee shop and similar; and plugging this in to an iPhone, plugging my power bank into the monitor and keeping the monitor in high-power mode and the iPhone charging while working with a Bluetooth keyboard.
Obviously I don't expect it to handle these use cases out of the box, but... open source! This is really a question about what the hardware design is capable of, not the current software/firmware/FPGA capabilities.
It was submitted to HN 2 times already but unfortunately it flew under the radar: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwa...
A claim in the video that I can't verify but makes economic/logistic sense is that the speed problem isn't the panels but the controllers. The current crop of controllers are optimized for low power, which fits the e-reader use case but that is not optimal for the interactive use case.
I don't understand the claim. It is lacking in specifics. Are they claiming that electrophoretic materials (meaning the panels) can actually switch (meaning move pigments) faster than say x.y micrometers per second? I don't think that is true. The article shows that what Wenting did ("binary transition") is pretty much the same as what companies like Dasung did. Instead of trying to have grayscale, it is faster to hit somewhat-black and somewhat-white and give the illusion of fast movement than actual fast movement.
No, I think the claim is that the controllers are slower that what the panels can theoretically support.
Why try to contort the technology for something it's not good at, instead of using a more appropriate technology like transflective LCDs? Eink isn't the only option for reflective displays. If you increase the power use of eink to get better refresh rates, I imagine you'd end up using more power than (and still end up with lower refresh rates than) an MIP display.
I don't understand the growth of the market as a whole for eink monitors, when tLCDs exist and are disappearing from the market.
Uses flipping wave interference for color. So cool. How do you make black? Easy! Humans can't see UV! :D
[1] https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/the-rise-and...
E-readers are vertically integrated devices: the hardware, software, UI, and refresh behavior are all tailored around reading. E-ink tablets like reMarkable are similar, but optimized around writing and annotation.
A traditional monitor is much more general-purpose, so it doesn't get the same kind of end-to-end optimization for the display medium. I think there's room for an in-between category: a more interactive e-ink device where both the hardware and software are designed around the strengths and limits of the panel.
There's some related work happening in this direction:
https://nlnet.nl/project/epd-wayland/
In TFA it is said that for these new faster panels the transition time of a pixel is around 50 ms. This is comparable with some old LCDs.
That said, I'm curious what impact the increased refresh rate might have on a Carta panel's longevity. I assume the physical medium that allows each 'pixel' to be on/off has a certain tolerance after which the screen begins to degrade beyond a usable state.
Separately, I also want to understand more about how Wenting's approach differs (or not) from the flickering modern displays use to emit a picture, and, whether the direction actually addresses eye strain or reproduces the same issues (I'm assuming are) inherent in LCD/LED displays — i.e. it's the flickering that strains our eyes, not just light.
Maybe someone more versed than I am in this space would know. After 10+ years of computer work... my eyes hurt and I really want this to be a game changer.
The E Ink material itself is long-lived, the main stress is on the driving electronics and waveform behavior during refreshes. Our approach doesn't add extra refresh cycles, the display starts responding sooner, which improves perceived speed without adding extra refreshes.
So far, fast refresh hasn't been the dominant failure mode in our testing. Physical stress, bending, pressure, heat, and moisture are much larger risks.
On eye strain: E Ink is reflective and bistable, so a static image doesn't require continuously emitted light. Fast updates can still produce artifacts like flashing, dithering, or ghosting, but that's a different issue from a display that continuously flickers.
So I'd say this addresses an important part of the problem, though comfort will vary by person.
Also I recommend checking out the following resources:
- https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okjJURIejIY
There are counter trends, like Garmin discontinuing their e-paper smartwatches. But hopefully that has more to do with that market being too narrow for viable alternatives, and not a fundamental issue with the economics of the displays themselves.
https://repebble.com/
Bangle.js 3 is being discussed: https://github.com/orgs/espruino/discussions/7341
Nothing else has satisfied that so far, after trying nearly a dozen. They've all had flaky connections, bad battery life, and/or screens that need me to shield from the sun sometimes. And the apps they require, holy crap are they bad. Gadgetbridge isn't shiny but it at least lets you control what you need.
I truly wish it was button-based though. Touchscreens on your wrist suck so bad.
I don't mind myself, and especially in winter with mittens on I can – and often do – use my nose :-D
And in some situations I much prefer it to be disabled, otherwise it reads phantom touches. (Bangle.js 2 has an option to ignore touches, though I forget the details. iirc until button press, or tapping a very small unlock button on the corner of the screen. Works well as a preventative measure, but I've never seen that on other watches)
The display isn't as nice as Pebble Time (fewer colors, more directional, overall slightly dimmer) but it's more than functional enough. Transflective is obviously the right choice for watches, I don't know why everything else has gone for phone-like panels that are often unreadable and kill battery life.
Wait what? Do you have a source? I can't find anything about that, and I see the Instinct 3 is still being sold. Very disappointing if so, as that line has been the perfect pebble replacement for me.
I can't see them ever removing it from the Instinct line though, as that's the rugged one that signals tool.
Those are some mighty specs. Godspeed.
and it's open source so nothing stops a bigger producer of copying the exact technology with institutional funding and manufacturing expertise
Nothing to add, but it bears repeating. A shimmer of indie tech resilience
https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-flow#products
learnt a lot in the process too - kudos to him
Firmware can be checked here: https://gitlab.com/zephray/enchanter
Styluses w/ batteries/capacitors were okay once upon a time, but Wacom EMR "just works" and makes my life simpler/nicer (I couldn't count how many styluses I have around my house/in my bags so as to allow me to use my Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, Galaxy Note 10+, Kindle Scribe Coloursoft, and Wacom One display (attached to a MacBook).
Bring back resistive touch!
That said, these days, I mostly use the Premium Pen included w/ my first-gen Kindle Scribe, or a Wacom One stylus (where the Staedtler used to be, prompted by my chipping and cracking the screen on my GB3 and having to apply a screen protector --- the harder tip on the W1 being a better match).
The Staedtler Noris Jumbo is nice, but I wish it had a side switch. The pens bundled w/ my Samsung Galaxy Books (panic-bought a spare when the afore-mentioned screen incident happened) are fine, but I am annoyed that there's no silo (agree w/ Samsung being hobbled by their agreement w/ Wacom being annoying). Don't like the feel of the white Kindle Scribe Coloursoft stylus --- too rubbery.
My backup is a Lamy Safari Wacom EMR which I keep in my travel sling bag --- if I could justify a second, I'd probably EDC it and it would get promoted to favourite.
There are a few others which I've been meaning to try....