Forma Still in favor?

[JSWolf]

If I had too, I could survive with a Kindle given KF8 and my choice of font being CareInk6SP, negative margins, and Hyphenate This!

That gets rid of the excess left/right margins. Gets rid of the excess line height. Gets rid of large gaps and give me hyphens via soft hyphens. Too bad KF8 does not have kerning.

[DNSB]

The Sage screen looks better in a side by side comparison. The weight doesn't bother me with either in their case.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The Sage screen looks better in a side by side comparison. The weight doesn't bother me with either in their case.

I wonder why the Moebius screen didn't take over. I had assumed the plastic substrate had a noticeable negative impact, because everything else about it (weight, durability) plastic seems clearly superior to glass.

[Quoth]

Stuff on glass (sapphire even better) lasts longer, more stable etc. Really you'd only want plastic on a roll-up display.

Plastic is only better for bending. They use gridded alloy castings as backing for glass panels.
Overall for same stability there is only a slight weight advantage on plastic.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Plastic is only better for bending.

Which is handy on a large eink screen like the Forma had.

The most common thing to break in an eink screen is the glass substrate. That was why there was talk around the Mobius screen in the first place. But then after the Forma, it was ditched, so I guess there were other problems.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Which is handy on a large eink screen like the Forma had.

The most common thing to break in an eink screen is the glass substrate. That was why there was talk around the Mobius screen in the first place. But then after the Forma, it was ditched, so I guess there were other problems.

I'm not saying Mobius has problems. It could be that that because of Carta 1200 having better contrast, Kobo went back to glass for a better looking screen. Maybe Kobo would go back to Mobius if the contrast is improved.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'm not saying Mobius has problems. It could be that that because of Carta 1200 having better contrast, Kobo went back to glass for a better looking screen. Maybe Kobo would go back to Mobius if the contrast is improved.

I am not an eink expert. It could be that I know just enough to sow more confusion. But I thought the Mobius screen wasn't a generation, like Pearl and Carta. I thought Mobius a designation meant to signify it had the plastic substrate. So you could have a Carta 1200 Mobius screen.

[Quoth]

I suspect Mobius was designed to compete with now defunct competitors that were going to supply screens for flexible, curved or roll up gadgets. Certainly plastic based OLED have shorter life and more prone to early failure than glass based OLED. The flexibility of plastic vs glass would seem to have a very limited advantage in a regular ereader with an Aluminium alloy chassis.

Edit:
Onyx Max Carta in 2017 allegedly has a flexible Carta Screen. See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onyx_Boox#Release_dates
So Mobius wasn't just flexible, but was a generation. That article lists later Mobius Carta too. But the most recent Onyx listed (2023) at 13.3″ and 2200x1650 is the Tab with a Carta 1250 (better speed and contrast than the Carta 1200).
The original Mobius didn't have Regal waveform mode.

[Quoth]

Wikipedia claims Mobius is a "Generation" after Pearl and before Triton and Carta.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#...odels_of_E_Ink

Plastic Logic was the flexible competitor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_Logic
First product was supposed to be 2004. Almost all proposed products never shipped and they seem to end in approximately 2013. They ceased manufacturing in 2012.

Another competitor was Liquid Vista, bought by Amazon in 2013, founded by Philips in 2006 and sold to Samsung by Philips. Amazon seems to have buried it.

Philips was originally also involved with eInk, the company founded in 1997. They seem to have been involved from about 1999, till it was sold to PVI or earlier.

On June 1, 2008, E Ink Corp. announced an initial agreement to be purchased by PVI for $215 million, an amount that eventually reached US$450 million following negotiations.[14][15] E Ink was officially acquired on December 24, 2009. The purchase by PVI magnified the scale of production for the E Ink e-paper display, since Prime View also owned BOE Hydis Technology Co., Ltd and maintained a strategic partner relationship with Chi Mei Optoelectronics Corp. (now Chimei InnoLux Corporation, part of the Hon Hai-Foxconn Group). Foxconn is the sole ODM partner for Prime View's Netronix Inc., the supplier of E Ink panel e-readers, but the end-use products appear in various guises, e.g., as Bookeen, COOL-ER, PocketBook, etc.

PVI renamed itself E Ink Holdings Inc. after the purchase. In December 2012, E Ink acquired SiPix, a rival electrophoretic display company.

It's very expensive because either E Ink or their major customers bought out competition, or competition went bust (there may be one rather grey one still independent), so the now Taiwanese company has a monopoly on quality epaper displays.

However, inherently the simplest display is LCD, followed by OLED (which are really printed electroluminescent dots with phosphors, not real LEDS). The eink is next.
Real LED panels tend to be wall sized, but Sony does have regular size panels called Crystal LED, that are real LEDs. About x20 more expensive than OLED.
The QLED is actually LCD with a blue LED backlight and a quantum dot based film instead of an RGB dye filter that actually converts blue light to green or red, so for the same LED power the QLED is maybe x3 to x4 brighter. There are no white* LED backlights on LCD, it's blue or violet LEDs with a yellow phosphor, or else arrays of R G & B LEDs. The QLED panel can be made bright enough for direct sunlight. The dye filters on coloured LCD or eInk can be faded by strong light. So LCD screens in call center & NOC walls do get burn in, as do the phosphors on OLED with bright static images.

[* All LEDs are monochromatic, colour changing ones have R, G, & B and ALL white LEDs have phosphor(s) on blue, violet or UV monochromatic LEDs, just like CCFL, CFL and ordinary florescent lamps need phosphors.]

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's very expensive because either E Ink or their major customers bought out competition, or competition went bust (there may be one rather grey one still independent), so the now Taiwanese company has a monopoly on quality epaper displays.

When you can get a very good reader new for about $100 and a top of the line one for $300, I'd say it is not very expensive. Though I do take your point that eInk's monopoly perhaps makes them cost more than they should.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

When you can get a very good reader new for about $100 and a top of the line one for $300, I'd say it is not very expensive. Though I do take your point that eInk's monopoly perhaps makes them cost more than they should.

Compare price of replacement approx 7" panels on LCD and eink. But not Apple or Samsung.

Also you can buy a decent phone or tablet without contract that far exceeds any ereader for €100 to €200.

There is very little electronics in a current ereader compared to an Oppo phone.

Only entry level ereaders are about the $100, but I agree now that Kindle Basic is 300 dpi rather than 167 dpi it's not bad. The Nia is nice even though the resolution a bit lower.

I just bought a 23″ 4K UHD monitor for about £170. Probably more electronics in it than an ereader.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Compare price of replacement approx 7" panels on LCD and eink. But not Apple or Samsung.

Also you can buy a decent phone or tablet without contract that far exceeds any ereader for €100 to €200.

I don't think ereaders and tablets are directly comparable. They do different things.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I don't think ereaders and tablets are directly comparable. They do different things.

Of course. But ereaders are simpler but with a complicated steampunk screen (technically mechanical!)

[Nightyume]

Personally I love my Forma and the Mobius screen's durability has saved me hundreds of dollars (careless and clumsy sometimes). I also have my Elipsa which I also love. I feel no need to get the Sage and am actually tempted to get a second Forma if possible to replace my current one when it eventually dies (but given that they're discontinued there wouldn't be much benefit).