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Cell Phone Accessories Displays

InkCase Plus E Ink display heard you needed a screen for your screen

Smartphones have spoiled today’s consumers with bright, gorgeously colorful screens. With each passing year, these screens grow bigger and become better at displaying the expanding variety of mobile content. The biggest downside to this is the horrid battery life most devices are cursed with and, as a result, people have to be picky with what they consume throughout the day.

Simply leaving a screen on to read takes a fair amount of battery power. To address this huge problem, a team at Oaxis has come up with the InkCase Plus, an E Ink screen that uses Bluetooth LE to communicate with Android devices. This union allows a wide variety of information to be accessed instantly without using what precious little battery power most devices have. Compatible apps can send notifications, navigation information, display e-books, or show fitness information.

The InkCase Plus is best used in conjunction with a leather FitCase. Doing so places the screen on the front of the case so that all this information can be accessed with a tap, even in the absence of a power source. While the InkCase Plus provides about 19 hours of reading time, the FitCase is currently only available for the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Note 3, making its pretty limited in practical use. Both products are being sold together for $139.

The InkCase Plus is a novel way of approaching the problem most smartphone manufacturers choose to ignore, even if what it is is another screen for your screen. Looking past that, E Ink integration makes a lot of apps so much more useful and suddenly makes glare less of a problem. Their biggest issue is the complete lack of support for the vibrant amount of Android hardware, but when isn’t that a problem with Android?

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Technology

Fusion Writer concept fuses together laptop and e-reader

It was a dark and stormy night. And that being the case, writers or professionals working on a document were taking big risks using their laptops and saving more frequently than ever before.

Using the same principles behind e-readers and other products that use electronic ink, the Fusion Writer is a slim word processor that is waterproof and can stay powered for two months. With a 13” LCD backlit display, solar power charging, Wi-fi and Bluetooth compatibility, and an Android OS, the Fusion Writer may only do one thing, but it aims to do that thing better than any other product on the market. Fusion Writer creator Ivan Samokish has set a funding goal of $50,000 CAD to buy quality components and finish development and production on the device. Getting in on the Fusion Writer’s prototype stage takes a $600 CAD pledge and will be ready by April 2016.

Some may scoff at the idea of a dedicated word processor in this day and age, but the amount of foresight that’s gone into making the Fusion Writer a hands-down leader at handling this task will make it a tool of the trade for journalists, authors, and writers around the globe. The only thing missing is some hands-on demonstration to give backers peace of mind that this project will see completion.

 

Categories
Accents Connected Objects

Smart O’Clock keeps you on top of scheduled appointments

smartoclockWhen planning a day around appointment notifications, there doesn’t appear to be a middle ground. Pop-up alerts or alarms either seem to happen too early to be significant and are quickly closed, or so late that the only option is to stop everything and run out the door. The Smart O’Clock combines the display of a standard wall or desk clock with Bluetooth Low Energy and electronic ink to solve this problem. Using a standard analog clock face with an extra segmented ring, the Smart O’Clock syncs up to any calendar app on iOS or Android phones and blacks out segments of the day that are already spoken for with activities. The approach seems more useful than the e-ink-based aclock. Smart O’Clock will arrive to customers who pledge at least $69 in July 2014.

Categories
Accents

aclock taps Bluetooth and e-ink display to little advantage

aclockNo matter how well it brings the room together, the alarm clock tends to be one of the most unpopular devices in the home. Ranging from the simple and classic to more modern inventive takes, the alarm clock really only needs to be successful in one way. With wireless Bluetooth synchronization with phones and a Kindle-style e-ink display visible in all levels of light, the aclock is a technologically modern take on the alarm clock that works in conjunction with a phone. In the process it doesn’t really do anything a phone can’t already, but provides a nice, external display. The aclock is currently available for pre-order.