Now this is quite an interesting idea. With battery life topping the list of concerns for almost every mobile phone user, e-ink seems like a promising energy-saving technology. You see, unlike traditional displays on mobile devices (usually LCD or OLED) that need a constant power supply to be visible, an e-ink display only requires electrical power to change the configuration.
CEACET from Japan is showing off this prototype mobile phone with an e-ink keypad. The e-ink keypad gives you all the benefits of a re-configurable keypad with all the power-saving advantages of a static, hard-key setup. And, the e-ink keypad can preserve tactile feedback while requiring almost no additional power (compared to hard keys).
We’d love to see this idea make it to market, and seeing as how CEATEC already has a prototype out there, we’d say it’s no too unlikely.
[Via: Ubergizmo]