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A New Take on Wearable Devices
minstrelmike writes: A company called Polyera is working on a wrist-worn device with a flexible, fabric-like screen that uses e-Ink technology and can go days without recharging. "Right now we design electronic devices that are built on rigid little bricks, so our devices end up looking like rigid little bricks. We wanted to make a fundamental technology that would completely open up the design capabilities. Now we're playing with materials that are more warm, and integrating electronics with materials that are more like leather than they are metal or glass." Their device is touch-sensitive and has much more usable screen space than most wrist-borne devices, which comes at the cost of being lower-resolution and grayscale.
I expect a device like that would be very popular with the one eyed, purple-haired mutant demographic.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The Pebble Time uses color e-ink.
I never understood the idea of slapping a humongous monstrosity on your wrist, but then having to be constantly charging it or having its display off all the time just to save battery. I've multiple times voiced my wish for pretty much exactly what the article is about, so I'm cautiously excited seeing and hearing more about this. An e-Ink display is great for showing things that don't need high refresh-rates, like e.g. reminders, slowly updating weather data, or stock tickers, or messages or, you know, clock -- I would love to have something like this to keep an eye on my servers just by flicking my wrist.
I won't be impressed until I can take my "tablet" and crumple it up like a piece of paper to shove into my pocket. Maybe this is going in the right direction...
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
Thanks random internet guy! We've just sacked our entire engineering and design staff. When can you send us the revised specs?
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Yeah, my current watch has a non-bendable screen. But that screen is also a convenient place to look for whatever information is being displayed. If the screen curved around my wrist, it would be capable of displaying more things than I could see at one time without moving my wrist. So functionally speaking, I don't see much advantage.
But if they do a good job with the aesthetics, and it actually looks good, I suppose that's worth something.
I hope this comes true; I would so enjoy owning something that Dali would approve of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Next up: E-Ink Clothing! Display your latest reminders on your left sleeve, your stocks on your right sleeve, your tweets on the front of your shirt, etc.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to stare. I was trying to read your latest tweet."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Alexander the Great used a similar (if more primitive) technology to coordinate the timing of his battles. It was a piece of cloth that was dipped in a stain that would change color over the course of the day. The captains wrapped it around their wrists so they would know when to attack.
It was called Alexander's Rag Time Band.
Almost sounds like the CST-01, which hasn't yet shipped one model, I think:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
My screensaver is the Tatoo-of-the-Day (and sometimes a public-message/ad on my back). My mate enjoys the touch interface, and so do I, now that we've found a safe lube. As a mobile terminal, I bring new meaning to "Computer Makes Remote House-Calls"; meanwhile I can track nutrient intake and adjust medication dosage patterns on-the-fly.
Flat screens are fine; reading on curved surfaces is tricky. I've got one that tells me the time and date, and runs for YEARS on a single charge!
Back when such things were new and would have been shiny if they weren't black, my wife gave me a Casio GPS wrist-watch. It was amazingly cool to have (not that it worked that well as a GPS), but it was really about as big and clunky a thing as I'd want to wear on my wrist. Most of that was about thickness, but anything bigger than about 1x3 is annoying if I'm wearing short sleeves, and even wristwatches can't get much bigger if I'm wearing long sleeves. I've got a couple of other semi-fancy watches that can tell me the phase of the moon or the tides in addition to time and date, but realistically don't wear them that often. (The tides one is useful for planning surfing, but unfortunately isn't actually waterproof enough to wear while doing so. :-)
But these days, I'm not only old enough to have worn wristwatches for some years (though I seldom bother now), but I also need reading glasses. I'm thinking of getting a (gasp!) analog watch, that tells time with a dial! (Ok, it might be a digital emulation of an analog display, and I'm not going to be retro enough to get one that actually needs winding, but I probably wore digital watches for 30 years, since the LCD ones came out.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
What about reflective displays? They should also not dissipate much power.