Kindle Phone with Dual Screens? Double the Pleasure or Double the Trouble?

Posted on September 3, 2012 by Max

Look! Up in the Sky! It’s a Kindle, It’s a Phone, Maybe it’s a SmartPhone with Dual Screens!

Stuff’s online magazine, Stuff.tv, and Pocket-Link.com are both reporting that E-Ink, the company responsible for providing the ‘paper’ technology used by e-book devices such as Kindles, has been demonstrating a new form of their technology to be used in smartphones.

The new prototype was exclusively shown to the people from Stuff at the IFA Trade Show in Berlin. The IFA or Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin is one of the oldest industrial exhibitions in Germany. It is also one of world’s leading trade shows for consumer electronics, where exhibitors can present their latest products and developments to the general public.

This new technology would allow dual screens on a smartphone. One side would be your basic smartphone LCD touchscreen featuring phone functions and apps. The flip side would be an e-book reader, utilizing E-Ink’s ultra-low power consuming ‘electronic paper’.

Dual Screen Smartphones
Photo courtesy of The Digital Reader

Dual Screens – What’s the Point?

Having an eBook reading component makes sense on an Amazon Smartphone. It’s a brilliant way for Amazon to combine two of its technologies — Amazon Smartphone and Kindle. Take in account that the battery consumption of the E-Ink display is extremely low and the displays themselves are thin, making them ideal for reading on your phone. Stuff suggested that one of the main benefits to its inclusion on a smartphone would be that important information could be left on screen indefinitely, even when your battery is very low.

Stuff.tv reported:

E Ink’s prototype has only just been shown to mobile manufacturers but the response was good. One anonymous mobile phone company is working on installing the second screens already.

According to The Digital Reader, Nicolas Charbonnier, AKA Charbax , from ARMdevices.net, was able to meet with the head of marketing of E-Ink at the IFA in Berlin. You can watch Charbax’s interview with Sri Peruvemba, Chief Marketing Officer of E- Ink, as he demonstrates the use of a dual screen smartphone (using mockups) at the IFA in Berlin here. The piece is 31½ minutes long in all – but the section regarding a dual screen smartphone begins right around 15:35.

The video itself showcases all sorts of prototypes from E-Ink, including a flexible screen and their newest prototype a device with a color lighted screen at 10:36.

Switch11′s Note: Lest you get too excited, eInk has been showing color eInk prototypes since 2005 (yes, since 2005).

Is Amazon Planning to Use This Technology in Kindle Phone?

Amazon has been considering dual screens for quite some time. After some searching at the US Patent and Trademark Office online, I found that Amazon filed a patent application on February 25, 2011.

Abstract
An electronic device including two or more display elements can provide enhanced functionality with improved rates of power consumption. A user can cause information that does not change rapidly to be provided or moved to a relatively static display element, such as an electronic ink display, which enables that information to be displayed for a period of time with little additional power consumption. Similarly, content (e.g., video) that changes rapidly can be displayed on a relatively dynamic display element, such as and LCD or OLED display. Each display can be touch sensitive, such that a user can move content between the displays by pressing on, or making a motion in contact with, at least one of the displays. Various modes can be activated which cause certain types of content to be displayed on the dynamic and/or static display element.

The electronic device that is frequently referred to throughout the patent in Amazon’s words:
…the electronic device is one of a tablet computer, a smart phone, a personal computer, a personal data assistant, and a portable gaming device.  – (Bold type added)

What I found interesting in the image documents that accompany the patent application, are the methods Amazon plans to use to operate the opposite display. One method describes the simple exertion of a minimum amount of pressure or at least a minimum duration – of an item displayed on one of the screens to “push” that item to through to the other side where the item will now be displayed. The other method describes the user “dragging” an item off the current screen, around the edge of the device, and “dropping” the item on the other display screen.

So What Do we Know?

Well, we’ve learned a lot. We learned that E-Ink has some nifty cool technology with the development of the dual screens. We learned that Amazon has been working on developing a patent for items that would use dual screens: e-readers, tablet computers, smartphones, PDAs, Video gaming consoles, portable media players…etc. We also learned why dual screens would be an admirable addition to a smartphone that Amazon may or not be developing.

There’s just one problem – with as much much as we’ve learned, we still don’t know, when-how-why or if any of this new technology will see the light of day on any of Amazon’s devices. Looks like we will just have to wait until September 6th for Amazon’s big press conference in Santa Monica to see what’s new.

Sources:
ARMdevices
Linked In
Pocket-Lint
The Digital Reader
Stuff.tv
The Digital Reader
US Patent and Trademark Office
YouTube
Wikipedia

Filed under: Kindle Phone | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

10 Kindle Fire & Kindle Phone Release Predictions

Posted on August 24, 2012 by switch11

10 Kindle Fire & Kindle Phone Release Predictions

  1. Kindle Phone that compares with Samsung Galaxy SIII and is better than iPhone 4 for $0 (with a 3 year contract). Based on Amazon’s modified version of Android.
  2. Kindle Phone available for $499 without contract.
  3. Kindle Phone will have features we’ve never seen before in a phone.
  4. Kindle Fire 2 in 7″ variant for $149.
  5. Kindle Fire 2 in 7″ variant with Ads for $99.
  6. Kindle Fire 2 in 10″ variant for $299.
  7. Kindle Fire 2 in 10″ variant with Ads for $249.
  8. Kindle Fire 10″ Special Screen and 3G version for $399.
  9. Kindle Fire 2 7″ Special Screen and 3G version for $299.
  10. Kindle Fire Special Screen version will have a screen that hasn’t been seen before and might even be magical and revolutionary.

That’s 6 models of the Kindle Fire and at least one model of the Kindle Phone. A special screen that’s a big step forward. A Phone that brings something completely new to the table.

Could Amazon Land a Telling Blow on Apple?

The September 6th announcement from Amazon is very interesting for a few reasons:

  1. By staging it on the 6th Amazon has the potential to trump Apple if it produces something really amazing in the next generation Kindle Fires or if it produces a really impressive Kindle Phone.
  2. By giving Apple a week it has the potential to really hurt itself i.e. Apple could counter Amazon’s key strengths. Note: I fully expect Apple to come in with iPad Mini at $199 or $249. Why? Because Apple is more interested in getting those users to become iPeople and buy other Apple products like 10″ iPads and iPhones and future iTVs and iCars and iPerfectFriends and iKids.
  3. Amazon almost seems to be picking a date to pre-empt Apple. If you mix it with the fact that this new Kindle Fire is supposed to be ‘the one that Amazon really wanted to ship’ and that Amazon might have a Kindle Phone in the works. Well, then you have the potential to have something very interesting revealed.

There’s a strong likelihood that in Kindle Phone (or perhaps in the 10″ Kindle Fire) Amazon has something that could really hurt Apple. Might Amazon be bringing an AK-47 to a gunfight. We only have to wait two weeks to find out.

Why Santa Monica? Why an Aircraft Hangar?

An Aircraft Hangar is a very challenging thing to build. As aircraft grew bigger and bigger the task grew more and more complex. For Amazon a Hangar is appropriate as its Amazon’s jump from making an exploratory 7″ Kindle Fire Tablet to making its own mobile phone and expanding full-scale into making devices.

The real clue though is its choice of Santa Monica.

Santa Monica is the home of the Douglas Aircraft Company. It produced the DC3 Commercial Aircraft which revolutionized air transportation. Many DC-3s are still used (it was first produced in 1936 – for it to still be used speaks to the quality).

The common saying among aviation buffs and pilots is that “the only replacement for a DC-3 is another DC-3.” The aircraft’s legendary ruggedness is enshrined in the lighthearted description of the DC-3 as “a collection of parts flying in loose formation”.

Perhaps that’s what Amazon and Jeff Bezos hope to do – to transform computing. To make the computing equivalent of the DC-3. Something that will still be used 70 years later.

A $499 Tablet that suffers from planned obsolescence every two to three years is too expensive for 95% of the World’s Population. Same for a $599 phone that also is outdated every 2-3 years. Both might as well be a trip on a Private Jet for most people. A good quality $99 Tablet and a good quality $99 Phone, on the other hand, would reach 10 to 20 times the number of people. If they are built to last, then you have something that begins to approach the craftsmanship of the DC-3.

How could we have gone from making Aircraft that last and work 70 years to phones and computers that don’t even work 3-4 years? How could any true artist take pride in making something that has planned obsolescence?

In typical Amazon fashion the Kindle Fire probably represents the first step of a 20 to 50 year plan to make devices for billions of people. Hence the appropriateness of going to the birthplace of the Douglas Aircraft Company and more importantly, the DC-3.

Who knows whether this is really what Amazon meant. All I know is that perhaps we need more companies that make DC-3s and less that make Ad-Tracking Software and Status Indicators and Skinner Boxes.

Filed under: Kindle Fire | Tagged: , | 3 Comments »

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