E-book readers today no longer come in the drab, uninspiring, and cheap forms of the early Amazon Kindles, though those certainly do still exist. Some are now Android tablets in disguise, bringing the versatility and, unfortunately, temptations of regular tablets to the E Ink world. Some go in the opposite direction, shrinking the size down to the palm of your hand, looking like smartphones but barely making the cut, at least by design.
In other words, it’s a great time for the design of E Ink devices, having grown out of their shell and into more interesting shapes and use cases. This one concept, for example, suggests bringing a dual-screen phone experience to that already niche market, and it seems to have taken a page out of LG’s book to recreate one of the brand’s more interesting devices in a few shades of gray.
Designer: Mechanical Pixel
Half a decade ago, LG introduced a rather intriguing design that tried to offer a more sensible and more practical alternative to the still non-existent foldable phone back then. Instead of a phone with a foldable screen or even two screens, the LG G8X ThinQ, and later, the LG Velvet and V60 ThinQ, had a folio smartphone case that added what is practically a second external screen beside the phone’s make screen. The execution left much to be desired, but the idea of being able to switch between different modes as needed definitely held merit.
This is exactly the same principle behind the inkReader duo concept, a phone-sized E Ink device that, at first glance, looks like a dual-screen E Ink phone joined by a 360-degree hinge. Well, it does function as one, but you can apparently take out the right half of the duo and use the single-screen device on its own. Given how the “second screen case” draws its power and data from the main device via pogo pins, it pretty much becomes useless except for displaying a static image like a photo or a note.
The technologies required for making this concept real are all more less already available today. Though as LG proved, it’s quite tricky to keep the two halves in sync, especially if the operating system was never designed with a second external display in mind. With a simpler custom OS, however, it might certainly be possible, especially if expectations are low to begin with, which is often the case for e-book readers.
The real question is whether such a design makes sense beyond the novelty of the experience. You could lay out an e-book in two pages like an actual book, or write notes on one side while reading text on the other. You could even turn the device horizontally to read the whole page in a single view, although with a wide gap in the middle. It could be a solution to the compact but still tablet-sized 7-inch E Ink readers in the market, one that can quickly fold in half and slip into your pocket.
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