<story><title>PineTime Is a $25 Smartwatch / Companion for PinePhone Linux Phone</title><url>https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/09/15/pinetime-smartwatch-companion-pinephone/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xorcist</author><text>Why isn&amp;#x27;t e-ink perfect here? A watch is perfectly usable in monochrome and is used in bright daylight which would favor high contrast and viewing angles. Plus battery life is good. Turns out there has been a few on the market but nobody really wanted them. Strange.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>leggomylibro</author><text>E-ink has fairly low refresh rates, and even though it uses no power at rest, it takes a lot of energy to refresh. &amp;#x27;Battery life is good&amp;#x27; has become a catechism, but it really depends on the use case.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t have hard numbers, but if you need to update as frequently as every second, I don&amp;#x27;t think you&amp;#x27;d gain much over a low-brightness color display with a polarized window for sunlight viewing.&lt;p&gt;And battery life seems like the only major draw of e-ink, as long as they are limited to one or two colors and a full-screen refresh rate that your eyes can easily register.&lt;p&gt;People have tried to develop tricks to update faster and minimize how much of the display gets refreshed, but I&amp;#x27;m not aware of many successes since a lot of it seems to require reverse engineering; the companies which produce the displays jealously guard any information about the refresh parameters and functionality as highly confidential IP, and the process appears to be heavily dependent on temperature.</text></comment>
<story><title>PineTime Is a $25 Smartwatch / Companion for PinePhone Linux Phone</title><url>https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/09/15/pinetime-smartwatch-companion-pinephone/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>xorcist</author><text>Why isn&amp;#x27;t e-ink perfect here? A watch is perfectly usable in monochrome and is used in bright daylight which would favor high contrast and viewing angles. Plus battery life is good. Turns out there has been a few on the market but nobody really wanted them. Strange.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>roadbeats</author><text>I use Garmin Instinct with monochrome display. It has so many features, even a simple navigation system, and it’s battery goes 2 weeks. I love it.&lt;p&gt;I can’t understand why people want to have color, fancy screens on a watch. Do we need colors to see the time? A calendar notification? Heart rate ?&lt;p&gt;A watch should serve information without distracting, and most importantly, I should be able to go out without thinking about battery life of my watch. It should be reliable enough to carry it in the arm.</text></comment>