E-ink Display Slow vs Fast Modes

[gezimos]

I’ve wanted to share some images of some tests I’ve done with the different display modes that are possible but still not activated.

Yes the Kompakt’s display is not high resolution but e-ink screens usually do a full or slow partial refresh to preserve the smoothness of the text/ui. But what Kompakt does is basically works on fast mode with no visible screen refreshes which are good for making the phone look fast, but the sacrifice is the UI and Fonts look very pixelated

• Example 1.
  

  
  
  Imgur Full resolution link so u can zoom in.

• A) is Original Fast Mode (low quality) that the Display Produces

• B) is What All of Us have on our device by default, from the looks of it it’s basically A mode just with a lot of contrast added to it.

• C) is one of the Slower Modes (not the slowest and not the sharpest yet).

You can see how much detail you get on the AntennaPod logo.

Here’s a cropped image of the default Weather App icon in the 3 modes.

A) Mode only for sideloaded apps
I was not happy with the original launcher so I started making my own fork of oLauncher to optimize it for e-ink devices with no animations.

What I understood from my testing is that Sideloaded Apps are getting only A) mode, that’s why everything looks so fuzzy and hard to read on apps that are not optimised for E-ink.

I’m not a developer so with my designer skills I was trying to call the driver that manages the Eink display to at least force B) mode on my app. Nothing worked because everything is tied into root user and I don’t want to root my device for this. With activity Launcher and logging at logs in Android studio, and some help with LLM I was able to find a command that shows Mode C). However this is only temporary, because the service that manages this takes over and stops it once you go to setting or the display goes to sleep.

• Example 2. Auxio Music Player
  
  
  
  Imgur link for full resolution

You can see on top Is the A) mode as the Display driver is not applying the B) Contrast mode to the Sideloaded apps. And bottom Image is with the Slower C) mode forced where text is much more readable and texts are sharp.

• Example 3. Video of screen actually refreshing
  

And keep in mind that there’s another mode that I was able to activate, which is used on the E-reader app. The reading mode makes everything smoother but it lacks the contrast which some people Don’t like. I think C) mode what I have shown here would be enjoyed by some people.

Contrast
You can notice if you exit a sideloaded app quickly for a brief second the whole app gets “darker” with more contrast because the contrast is forced on the Default Mudita Launcher.

What’s the point of this post?

I would like Mudita to offer us the E-ink tools to manage the speed of the refresh rate:
a) It would be good to allow us to choose it in per-app basis.
b) Maybe have an auto mode where it stays on slow mode for text/icon based apps and then turns into the fast mode for scrolling.
c) For us that are trying to develop our apps, it would be nice to have some documentation on how to access the display driver modes. My text based app launcher I’m working on has zero animation and scrolling, so I would like to be able to call the Slow refresh mode in order to preserve text quality.

There should be more talk about this
I don’t want to downplay other peoples requests and bug reports, but Display & Eink modes are not getting the attention they deserve here. It literally is the “star” of the phone, otherwise the Kompakt it’s a cheap entry level android phone with an offline button.

Sorry for the long post.

[petemeister]

Excellent analysis and even better suggestions! I’d very much like the ability to set the mode on a per-app basis.

Good work @gezimos!

[gezimos]

Thank you! I’ve seen some reviews saying that the screen is lower resolution, which is true compared to the PPI of Boox, Highbreak. But I think the issue here is only the implementation of the refresh rates.

The fonts & icons can look sooo good in the slower mode!

[jayloofah]

Nice post!

[nilstzh]

I think this is a great suggestion right here! (Also a text-based launcher without animations sounds great! Non of the existing options operate well on eink…)

[anon4838315]

100 percent support this and the Bigme Hibreak Pro already has this!

[bogdan]

This should be priority number one, great post.

[aleksander]

@gezimos

otherwise the Kompakt it’s a cheap entry level android phone with an offline button

ouch!
I passed on your suggestions to our team. Please make sure to include them when you fill the satisfaction survey you’ve probably received via email.

[gezimos]

Thank you for the reply
I know it sounds like a sting, but spec wise that is true
It’s the eink display that makes this thing the most exciting phone I’ve had in a decade

[aleksander]

@gezimos

the most exciting phone I’ve had in a decade

Thank you for adding this
And for sharing your honest feedback—while compliments give joy, the feedback gives us space to grow.

[petemeister]

@bogdan

This should be priority number one, great post.

Steady on. The Mudita Kompact can’t notify you if you have voicemail. It hasn’t been implemented. So, while I would love to see these adjustments in e-ink refresh modes, there’s certainly bigger fish to fry first.

[iyov]

Thanks for this analysis and long post! The different e-ink modes sound really promising and are something I would gladly use. Will you be sharing your launcher as well? I would love to have a text-based launcher. I tried different one from F-droid or Aurora store but the need to be purchased to have all the options which seems to require play services…

[gezimos]

I’m gonna share it when I feel it’s ready. I’m gonna share some wip soon

[miauzgenau]

Any update?

[gezimos]

If you’re asking about the app, it’s been released earlier this month:

inkOS: Text Based Launcher with Notifications for Mudita Kompakt

I would like to present inkOS A simple text based launcher with basic notification capabilities. [preview] This is my first time making an app, so It’s a fork of mLauncher which is a fork of oLauncher. Of course it’s free and open source, you can download it from Github You can read some “documentation” since I tried to keep the feature descriptions short in the app settings. ATTENTION! To install third party launcher in Mudita Komapkt you need to enable inkOS or another launcher as a …

If you’re asking about e-ink modes. There haven’t been any, and my follow-up questions to the managing director for this haven’t been answered:

Why is Mudita Making its Own Apps?

You’re correct it seems it’s MIT now, but it was GPL v2 originally so I stand corrected. The E-Ink driver includes proprietary parts from hardware manufacturer, so we cannot release it. With this I meant if you’re going to include the function inside Mudita OS so we can set the modes within the Mudita OS K. Like I can set Gamma mode to Signal so text can be clear but it will still be fast like in Mudita Launcher, and then set reading mode to RSS feeder because It has not animation and it d…

[jonny]

I want to emphasize how important it is for us as users to have e-ink modes available. Although I was very excited about the phone and love the idea behind the Kompakt, I was seriously disappointed by the screen quality when I received my device—especially the resolution, which was noticeably worse than expected. I had used an old Kindle before, and its resolution was significantly better. As a result, I didn’t even touch the phone for the first few weeks, seriously considering returning or selling it.

Like many others, I ended up sideloading apps to get at least the basic functionality I’d need to use the phone as a daily driver. Unfortunately, most apps look really poor on the e-ink screen.

Now that I see what’s actually possible, as shown in the examples above, I truly don’t understand why dedicated e-ink modes aren’t provided. You’ve already acknowledged that users need the ability to run other apps—providing optimized e-ink modes for them would be the logical and much-appreciated next step.

By the way, great work on the launcher, @gezimos. I really appreciate all the effort you’re putting in to make the Kompakt work for those of us who love the idea behind the phone.

[gezimos]

@jonny

Although I was very excited about the phone and love the idea behind the Kompakt, I was seriously disappointed by the screen quality when I received my device—especially the resolution, which was noticeably worse than expected.

When I ordered this phone all reviewers had pre-release software so I imagined the e-ink modes would come on release.

I didn’t even question this, since it wasn’t just an e-reader for static text but a phone that shows multiple types of media.

This thread shows as the 3rd most popular topic in this forum for the last year, I think it’s related to likes. But it hasn’t received the necessary attention from Mudita or other fellow users.

@jonny

By the way, great work on the launcher, @gezimos. I really appreciate all the effort you’re putting in to make the Kompakt work for those of us who love the idea behind the phone.

I’m glad you like the app

[nilss]

I just wanted to chip in on this topic. Whilst I don’t care that much for e-ink modes, even though I own a Boox device, I do think that the e-reader app should have slow mode. I’m not asking for much if it comes to e-readers, but for God’s sake the e-reader should not show ghosting and needs crisp text. I don’t understand why the team gave the maps app a slow mode (leading to flickering, btw) but not the e-reader.

[ovy]

+1, WE WANT E-INK DISPLAY MODES

… but Mudita’s management know better what we want…