New PocketBook 7.8" Color E-Ink Reader

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

It is all speculation until it is resolved scientifically.

Most of the speculation I have seen on this matter has been nonsense.

I fear we'll have to speculate for a long time, then. Science doesn't seem too keen on solving this issue for us.

In the meantime I'll go by what my eyes tell me: using ambient lighting is best, strong frontlights or backlights are tiring - but if utilized should be in a warm hue and a low setting.

The worst light I have yet experienced is the frontlight on my Hisense A5 Pro. On night mode (the lowest setting) it could light up an underground dwarven kingdom. As soon as I enable the light I feel a pang of pain behind my eyes and sudden nausea; they both fade after the initial discomfort, but still. I think it's the hue of the light and screen that does it (and the fact that it just doesn't go low enough).

Onyx Nova 3 with warm light is rather pleasant, on the other hand.

I have heard that the pocketbook should have even better lighting (though most people talk about the evenness of it rather than the actual quality).

[WT Sharpe]

Does this device really have a BACKlight as mentioned several times in the article on the Aroged website mentioned in the first post?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Does this device really have a BACKlight as mentioned several times in the article on the Aroged website mentioned in the first post?

Several possibilities. Eink has performed a miracle and made a transparent eInk screen, Aroged does not know the difference between backlit and frontlit or the translation was in error such as when Girodatchik (which I think should be Giro datchik ( Гиро датчик )) was not translated to gyro sensor.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Several possibilities. ...Aroged does not know the difference between backlit and frontlit...

That's my suspicion, but technological miracles are always a possibility, I suppose.

[b0rsuk]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Wow, that is a Kernel from 2015. Why don't they use a more recent one?

I guess they value stability and bugfixes above everything else. It's been tested and fixed to death. It doesn't need new device drivers, virtualization features or filesystems.

* * *

I'm a new eReader user, but I feel more comfortable reading without frontlight. Then I have to use stronger light from above, and the overall contrast between the text and area around it is better (lower). I don't think it's the backlight that tires your eyes (although it may have more blue light). It's the effect of the glowing screen surrounded by shadows.

Naturally, even the new screen InkPad 3 has is a bit gray, but it doesn't bother me.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by rantanplan

Wow, that is a Kernel from 2015. Why don't they use a more recent one?

I can't think of any reason to use a newer Linux kernel if the older one does the job. My HD3 has the 3.10.65 kernel instead of the slightly older one, but it probably doesn't make a lot of difference for an eReader. I think the newer Linux kernels are more important for computers with "cutting edge" components.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by rcentros

II think the newer Linux kernels are more important for computers with "cutting edge" components.

Yes.
Drivers, Security, multiple users at same time(server) etc. An ereader is a dedicated appliance.

[Kory]

I received my PB Inkpad Color yesterday. I must say, though, it was disheartening to read this thread since so many people seem to be pooping all over it! :-) Still, for me it was a pretty big upgrade over my old Paperwhite (G1).

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=337581

[totasenior]

See my post in:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=337581

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by Kory

I must say, though, it was disheartening to read this thread since so many people seem to be pooping all over it!

People have been waiting for color for years. Now it's happening, they are, as you say, pooping on it. Sure, it has some limitations, but this an early iteration of the tech. What do they expect? Perfection from the start? I for one am excited by the development, and my next e-reader will probably be color.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

People have been waiting for color for years. Now it's happening, they are, as you say, pooping on it. Sure, it has some limitations, but this an early iteration of the tech. What do they expect? Perfection from the start? I for one am excited by the development, and my next e-reader will probably be color.

The problem for many people is that they have gotten used to millions of colours and vibrant colours.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Kory

I received my PB Inkpad Color yesterday. I must say, though, it was disheartening to read this thread since so many people seem to be pooping all over it! :-) Still, for me it was a pretty big upgrade over my old Paperwhite (G1).

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=337581

I think the reception in this thread has been warmer than for previous color e-ink readers.

[Pajamaman]

Originally Posted by DNSB

The problem for many people is that they have gotten used to millions of colours and vibrant colours.

I expect your average Web site to disparagingly compare eink to lcd. But not mobileread readers. Perhaps it was just JSWolf being a Debbie downer.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Pajamaman

People have been waiting for color for years. Now it's happening, they are, as you say, pooping on it. Sure, it has some limitations, but this an early iteration of the tech. What do they expect? Perfection from the start? I for one am excited by the development, and my next e-reader will probably be color.

Maybe some new electronic ink will do better, but all of these colour eink screens are simply incremental variations of passive coloured dye filtering on the current eink technology which reached a plateau in visual quality years ago, with only variations in dpi and over all size and plastic vs glass substrates.

So it's a dead-end niche. Sadly Mirasol and other alternate static colour technologies were killed off by a mix of cost, royalties and over hyped performance.

It might get slightly better, but it's close to the limits of physics for static filters on a greyscale eink screen, not technology.

I've seen a lot of colour display technologies come and go since 1971 when I started seriously studying them. Some get unexpectedly abandoned, like in the 1990s they finally solved how to do the 1970s idea of a beam-indexed single gun CRT instead of shadowmask or trinatron three gun CRTs. The TFT driven LCD panel was the final doom of the CRT. OLED doesn't have the lifetime or cheapness at scale of LCD, as it doesn't use real LEDs, they are electroluminescent dots with phosphor, so wear for two reasons. Real LED panels are ether wall sized or horribly expensive (Sony calls them Crystal LED).

None of the candidates for even mono bistable displays have proven to compete well with eink types. Inherently colour needs to either be R G B bistable opaque cells or possibly Cyan, Yellow and Magenta bistable opaque when colour and transparent when not, with either a mirror or partial mirror and backlight. There is a parallax (viewing angle) issue with layered cells unless they are very thin and the two internal barriers are thin.

Colour film originally used a random R G B dyed starch particle filter (think of tiny coloured balls, mixed and then attached to glass plate with emulsion) on the monochrome film that like Triton and later colour on eink greatly reduced the light. Using Cyan, Yellow and Magenta layers was a massive breakthrough on sensitivity and resolution for colour fil.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Colour film originally used a random R G B dyed starch particle filter (think of tiny coloured balls, mixed and then attached to glass plate with emulsion) on the monochrome film that like Triton and later colour on eink greatly reduced the light. Using Cyan, Yellow and Magenta layers was a massive breakthrough on sensitivity and resolution for colour fil.

A few decades back, I remember seeing some Autochrome samples at the George Eastman Museum. Very much of a dancing bear moment.