I love reading on my eInk reader. I think if a had phone where the book I was reading was always on the outer screen, I would read even more. But, is this too niche of a form factor?
No.
Been a fold user for going on 3 years now, and the outside display is pretty indespensible. Being able to use the phone as a normal phone, then being able to open the device and use it as a tablet, is the whole schtick. One doesn’t really work without the other.
No because i think i’d use the unfolded state less than the normal folded. I at least want to have the option tò use only the folded state Like normal smartphone.
I don’t think I am going to want a folding phone for a very long time. An e-ink display on the back of a phone for reading, or displaying static content, would be cool though. It would be nice to have recipes on an always on display, same with shopping lists, and some other reference materials.
It looks like at least one company made a prototype of such a thing back in 2013: https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/10/the-yotaphone-has-an-e-ink-display-on-the-back-and-thats-simply-awesome/
I don’t know why e-ink never seems to take off outside of e-readers, maybe it’s just still too expensive?
e-ink is a weird niche tech IMO. The room required and case/screen protection would be the same as a typical OLED display. So why would an e-ink be better than a full functional display?
The only time I think e-ink’s are really useful outside of book readers is for situations where data refresh rate is seldom or battery life is critical and long microcontroller sleep times can be leveraged with the display still showing information without power for a very long duration.
I think the issue there is that eink screens are super low refresh rate. The new razr plus has a very usable and low demand outer screen that could get you close to that.
