Rejoice, for Hisense are taking a real interest in developing solutions for people who suffer from eye strain. Yesterday they announced the world's first E-ink colour phone, in a standard and pro variant, as well as a new reflective LCD (RLCD) monochrome tablet that appears to support HDMI in. This announcement, at least for me, is very important. I'll break it down:
The A5C and Pro CC are two affordable android e ink phones that are capable of displaying 4096 colours. The pro appears to have a refresh rate of just 137ms, making it a very useable colour smart phone. Like the A5, both are fully useable in ambient light. This is therefore the first modern colour smartphone that uses ambient light that I am aware of. The colour will of course be very muted, but given that I find videos perfectly watchable on the regular A5, it will provide an adequate media experience that will save many from jumping back to a regular phone. These are being released in June.
Secondly, a 10 inch RLCD tablet has been announced. This is also a big deal as it's the first modern reflective display that should be able to be used as an external monitor. Given it's LCD, we can expect fast refresh. It's monochrome unfortunately, though this was likely necessary to ensure contrast was adequate. My primary interest will be seeing how dither affect me on this screen. Hisense have also said they will release an 'eye-friendly' external light to be used with it. Interesting to see how that works out, but the bottom line is Hisense, alongside Onyx, are the two device manufacturers that are really providing solutions for those with light-based disorders.
I plan on purchasing both of these devices and like with the A5, I will talk about them on this forum for anyone interested. Unfortunately the preorder system is only on JD.com, whcih apparently will ship internationally but I haven't found a way of navigating the chinese sign up page (if anybody can help out here I'd really appreciate it).
Hisense A5C https://item.m.jd.com/product/100012545746.html
Hisense A5 Pro CC https://item.m.jd.com/product/100007001395.html