Hisense A5C, A5 Pro CC, color e-ink phones

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by mdp

Oops I trusted Kozlowski.
But anyway: how come the display is not found among eink modules, at
www.eink.com/modules.html
? There is no 5.84'' 1440x720 display!

And if one checks products by "newness" (verbatim, their term), one colour display appears but it is a 600x448 that is probably ACeP:
shopkits.eink.com/product/5-65%cb%9d-e-ink-gallery-palette-4000-epaper-display-ab1024-ega-%e3%80%90display-module-only%e3%80%91/

No but there is https://www.eink.com/color-technology.html this page.

Dale

[viceant]

I wonder: if past eink color technologies didn't succeed because their washed colors? Is this new one better? Or is it only the market is ready for it now?

Enviado desde mi Redmi 3S mediante Tapatalk

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by mdp

But it is not clear how it is engineered, hence detailed pictures should be seen.
The concepts we are using here are strongly metaphors, not facts: it is certainly tinted, it does somehow build colour, but the perceptive trick there is much more unusual than RGB and CMYK: it does not even have black as K, the closest it has to K-black can be the dots partially overlapping the gaps between the tinted bars... Not to mention it does not have white (what I called "mélange")!

We know how the colour filter is overlayed on the 300dpi eInk display. See this post (in this thread!)

[notwaiting]

The thing I'm more concerned about is the reflective screen. Is this just a matter of a missing or poor choice of protective layer, like on the a2, or it is somehow impossible to include matte like they did with the a5, due to the way that the colour filter works?

The a2 didn't look nice when catching the light and felt like using an ipad, not nice to the touch. And self attached matte screen protectors did not work out well, for me at least.

The colour phone looks good (otherwise) to me in the video. I'll wait for the user reviews.

[mdp]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

We know how the colour filter is overlayed on the 300dpi eInk display. See this post (in this thread!)

There must be a misunderstanding here pdurrant: the matter I am discussing there is not «how the colour filter is overlayed» on the display. You must have seen the picture I have taken, edited and published at post #71: it is taken from that video - I have seen it.

User Yoko22 has stated «if the resolution would be a problem due to the colors wouldn't we see it in the different video online?»
to which the direct answer would be that you need very clear pictures of details to see that.
Those would also reveal «how [rendering] is engineered». This does not reduce to knowing how the filter is made. It has all to do with how the filter is used: what do the rendering algorithms do to make that filter part of the "rendering with colours" goal.

The problem (which is complex and I am taking bits and pieces in this post) is evident by the expressions that Kozlowski has used in his article, such as «PDF rendering engines will display PDF files as an image [at 100 PPI], because that is basically what they are». Kozlowski tries to makes it light for his readers, and does not stick to the maxim of not oversimplifying. His razor is not the redundancy trimmer that would come from Occam; it is more related to Eugene (in "Be careful with that axe Eugene!"). PDF rendering engines of course do translate data into an image, because an image is what goes into a display: but such an image is originally made of at least raster and vector, which require different treatment. It may make sense that raster is assumed as in-colour and rendered as low-res, but the same is not valid for vector - like text -, though not all vector, because it may be flattened to anti-aliased black, or it may be rendered as low-res when in colour, or it may be tinted with a trick like the one I drafted at post #80. Many paths are open, it is not clear how the renderer works, how it interacts with other renderers at different software layers etc. Results must be seen. Just seeing how the hardware is done does not help.

[Yoko22]

"if the resolution would be a problem due to the colors wouldn't we see it in the different video online" By that I was also trying to say that if the resolution is so different we should see it with the naked eyes in the video online but maybe it is not so different so we can't see the different unless we inspect it more closely.

But we are just guessing here, anyone planning on buying that thing and to review it here?
I'm surprised that there are not enough reviews on those product out there, it's annoying when there are so many for other phones. Even the A5 colorless E-ink doesn't have many video reviews on it and it's been released since at least 6 month.
On the A5 there is a lot of text review here fortunately but not many have done a video on it.

[joblack]

It looks very much coarse-grained. I like the style as it is reminding me about the 90s home computer era.

Unfortunatelly 100 dpis aren't so much for reading ebooks. If I read a textbook will it have the 'real' black and white 300 dpis?

As for solving the color problem. If they would increase the screen to 900dpi it should be 300dpis in color.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by joblack

It looks very much coarse-grained. I like the style as it is reminding me about the 90s home computer era.

Unfortunatelly 100 dpis aren't so much for reading ebooks. If I read a textbook will it have the 'real' black and white 300 dpis?

The display can display black pixels at 300dpi. The remaining pixels will blur together into white, with a tiny (probably unnoticeable) colour fringe at the black edges. So for black and white documents, it's 300ppi.

It's similar to the ZX Spectrum display, or PAL television. High res B&W with lower resolution colour

[kova4a]

I was pretty eager to get a5pro cc, but I guess I'll have to wait for the next phone generation. The goodereader's video comparison of a5c with the color ireader clearly shows that hisense's color eink implementation is not the best.

There's also the video comparison between A5pro and A5pro cc on JD. The a5 pro looks so much better - the screen is clearer, whiter and more evenly lit, and the frontlight has a more natural and less bluish tone. They are explaining the difference between the two models quite well and now I'm set on just getting the a5 pro - that new speed mode looks sweet.

Here is a link to the JD video of A5pro/cc https://vod.300hu.com/4c1f7a6atransb...torageSource=3

CECt shop have also released a video showcasing the A5pro cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xqkWga0PFo

[notwaiting]

Looks like the CC is available.

HiSense A5 Pro CC
Ships in 5-8 days
$332.37

It's kind of difficult to decide on this one, I wouldn't be too surprised to see a non-blue, non-reflective, google enabled version in 6 months. (Not that I need google.)

[mdp]

Originally Posted by Yoko22

"if the resolution would be a problem due to the colors wouldn't we see it in the different video online" By that I was also trying to say that if the resolution is so different we should see it with the naked eyes in the video online but maybe it is not so different so we can't see the different unless we inspect it more closely

You have to have the right video footage. You cannot "see" what happens in a situation if it was not recorded. You should point to some video frames (which must be very high resolution and very crisp - you do realize that the videos and the device have, in general, comparable resolutions, and that video recording is not necessarily as crisp as a static shot (not to mention low-bitrate dynamic compression), right? You should see details of the renderings on the display on a high-res video - like, one quarter of the screen on a four-times as big video), which show possible critical behaviour - text rendered in colour, coexistence of images and text, pdf rendering, rich web pages etc.

[mdp]

I just found on Reddit (from new owner u/ribcookie) a very nice picture of the Hisense a5pro cc.
Still not answering the matter of "How and how well are PDF files rendered" and similar*, but showing very well how the "white-ish mélange" looks like and gives some (reassuring) suggestion about how graphics are treated.

*(note: one of the triggers of my former notes is having kept impressed a FAQ in our forum, about using reflective displays for programming. The practice of programming implies syntax highlighting, which is rendering vectors in many colours. These phones will probably see programming as a very, very unusual practice owing at least to their size, but the question about "How does sky-blue or mauve text look like on some colour-filtered e-ink display based implementation" is very relevant to that aim and similar.
Of course, a question about something more frequent like "Will a tinted link anchor in an hypertext look as clear as the surrounding text" remains valid.)

[mdp]

Originally Posted by mdp

Not all tricks are feasible, nor all tricks are employed. In fact, for example, such device will have to rely heavily on A2 to display video. Now: will such A2 be employed cleverly or not? Because, for example, I have seen devices using a Floyd-Steinberg dithering for A2 rendering: which has the gigantic drawback of using very heavy randomness in a hardware technology which has the characteristic of having a breakthrough low cost in retaining dot state, and conversely a massive cost in changing such dot state (of dots which also have a limited lifetime) - thus losing the power efficiency of E-Ink's EPD. Clever dithering on EPD not only generically looks nice: it is also supposed to change as little dots as possible. Implementation not granted at all.

I believe I have just seen a video, recorded at close range to see the details, of an Hisense phone playing video: it seems to use a naïve dithering for A2 implementation. Not cleverly engineered, it will gratuitously drain your battery.

Well, that described above was just an example of "nor all tricks are employed". Probably a good one: it seems it was also factual.

[tracey1]

Is there a Hisense phone with a matte, non-reflective EPD in the making ? If not - why the hell not ?

Also, is there any update on possible google play functionality in the future ?

[charlie - uk]

Originally Posted by tracey1

Is there a Hisense phone with a matte, non-reflective EPD in the making ? If not - why the hell not ?

Also, is there any update on possible google play functionality in the future ?

The Hisense A5, has a matt screen protector on it which is OK. I just bought a Hisense A5CC colour e-ink phone, and put a matt screen protector on it, which is OK. Google Play functionality is available for the A5. You'll have to wait a bit for the pro & colour versions....

BROTECT AirGlass Matte Glass Screen Protector for Hisense A5, A5C, A5CC