Lessons Learned Developing for an Eink Display

I recently spent a bit of time becoming familiar with the Boox Max 2 tablet with Eink display. I worked on an application for an auto manufacturer that could search patents using an app targeted for mobile. The Boox Max 2 runs Android, but is slightly modified to accommodate the special display, and vendor modified OS.

There were a few interesting quirks developing for the Eink display. This particular display had an excellent refresh rate. I could play video with smooth results. The display basically takes colored images and automatically displays them greyscale. You can see a review of the Boox Max 2 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv0g-pYMAk

The only interesting quirk that I encountered on this device was when switching static screens. For instance switching from a search display to a patent result display.

During this complete screen transition, some times a latent image of the previous screen would remain burned into the new display. To remedy this, you can wash the entire screen with white or black for a short duration. That will force the display to completely re-render the next screen.