The Global Award of ePaper Product Innovation

(Launched 2026) Cover Glass E Ink Prism™ Color-Changing Strip Integration Technology

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 23:14:45 +0800

I. Product Innovation Background

Traditional electronic product cover plates are primarily made of rigid transparent or single-color materials such as glass and acrylic. Their colors and surface ID patterns (e.g., brand logos, decorative textures, personalized identifiers) are fixed designs that cannot be adjusted based on user preferences, usage scenarios, or environmental changes. This fixed design approach has the following limitations:

(1) Limited functionality: Traditional cover plates only provide basic screen protection and scratch resistance, lacking interactivity and engagement. Users cannot switch cover plate colors and ID patterns according to personal preferences, failing to meet aesthetic requirements across different scenarios such as daily use, business settings, and leisure activities.

(2) Limited color options: Traditional cover plates typically come in black or white, making it difficult to switch colors. Color mixing is challenging — repeated ink color adjustments often still fail to achieve the desired color effect.

(3) Poor adaptability: Fixed-color cover plates exhibit significant visual differences under varying lighting conditions. For example, light-colored cover plates reflect glare under strong light, while dark-colored ones have low visibility in dim environments. Additionally, fixed ID patterns cannot provide dynamic feedback based on device status (e.g., power-on, charging, notifications).

Therefore, developing a new type of cover plate with a simple structure, controllable cost, and dynamically changeable colors and logo patterns has become key to addressing the limitations of existing technologies. ePaper color-changing film technology offers advantages such as low power consumption, lightweight flexibility, and flexible color switching. Applying it to electronic product cover plates can effectively solve the above issues and meet the demand for personalized customization of electronic products.

II. Product Innovation Purpose

Since the display layer of ePaper screens is composed of micro-capsules containing dye molecules, it cannot bend like OLED. This makes it difficult to resolve the space occupied by edge wiring, limiting the design to three-sided narrow bezels at most. This results in one side always having a wider bezel, significantly constraining the overall ID design of the device. The only workaround is to silk-screen side strips in different colors to create a visual narrow-bezel compensation.

Our product department engineers, while exploring color-changing film applications, noticed that customers frequently adjust side strip colors back and forth. To achieve the desired visual effect, a single new project's cover plate often requires multiple rounds of sampling and color confirmation. This led to the exploration of applying color-changing film technology to cover plate color variation. After discussions with the customer, we jointly decided to develop a cover plate product capable of side color changing.

III. Design Inspiration

The vertical gradient color strip design on the cover plate side is rooted in Eastern natural aesthetics and the art of light and shadow flow. Drawing inspiration from the natural color transitions of mountain glow between dawn and dusk, it captures the diverse color palette that flows naturally from sunrise to sunset, freezing ever-changing natural light and shadow within the compact side area. This imbues the minimalist, rectangular screen exterior with dynamic layered beauty and poetic depth.

The vertically arranged gradient colors replicate the light and shadow transition pattern of the sky from deep to light, warm to cool during dawn and dusk. The warm tones of reddish-brown and light yellow are drawn from the morning glow at dawn, carrying a vibrant and lively visual atmosphere that symbolizes vigorous upward momentum, representing the device's stable, efficient, and continuously sustained performance. It also embodies the user's aspirations to move forward and forge ahead. The transitional blue tones originate from the clear sky, representing rationality, reliability, and composure, reflecting the product's precise and stable technical core and conveying a professional, rigorous character. The concluding deep green and gray tones are extracted from the tranquil base colors of mountain forests at dusk, combining inclusiveness and calmness — both softening the visual clutter of multi-color combinations and symbolizing steady endurance and long-lasting durability.

The regular vertical narrow strip design, set against the large-area minimalist silver-gray body, breaks the monotony of the overall appearance. The vertically extending color lines visually elongate the body proportions, giving the device a sleek and refined aesthetic. Multiple colors transition gradually and softly without strong color conflicts, balancing premium visual recognition without disrupting the device's overall minimalist and elegant design tone.

The design distills the beauty of natural temporal sequences into industrial product details, integrating the gentle poetry of mountains and rivers at dawn and dusk into hardware exterior design, giving cold industrial components the warmth of natural aesthetics.

IV. Product Structure

The RF-ET0700356 color-changing cover plate is a color-changeable eReader cover plate product. The product includes a glass cover plate, AG film, PS film, color-changing ePaper, and a complete driver board.

1) Color-changing cover plate stacked structure

2) Substrate routing and processing flow

Substrate: Uses ultra-thin, ultra-light substrate material primarily composed of polymer compounds. The circuitry employs high-precision transfer printing technology, with silver paste via-holes connecting the carbon paste blocks on the front of the substrate to the silver wire traces on the back. The substrate processing flow is as follows:

3) ePaper

E Ink Prism™ 3S microcup-based 6-color ePaper. The film consists of millions of microcup structures, with microstructure sizes approximately the diameter of a human hair. Each microcup contains four types of charged particles suspended in a transparent fluid: positively charged red and blue particles, and negatively charged yellow and white particles. When a positive or negative electric field is applied, the corresponding particles migrate to the top of the microcup, displaying the desired color and pattern. In Prism 3S color display, E Ink guarantees six colors: white/red/yellow/black/blue/green, where white/red/yellow are primary colors and black/blue/green are mixed colors.

Upper PS film: A barrier film suitable for EPD displays and flexible solar photovoltaic encapsulation, featuring high weather resistance and high moisture barrier performance. The water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) can meet 10⁻³.

4) Driver module

The Prism 3S driver IC uses the IST7400LB1. The IST7400LB1 is a 64-channel output ePaper (EPD) source driver chip. The device employs a 3-bit serial input/parallel output architecture, with each output channel integrating level-shifting functionality that converts 3-bit digital signals into 8-level analog output voltages (VP3, VP2, VP1, GND, VN1, VN2, VN3, and high-impedance state Hiz). Through input logic levels combined with OE pin control, the 64 output pins (S1 through S64) can dynamically switch to any of the above voltage levels.

The main controller chip is the STM32 microcontroller from STMicroelectronics, featuring an ARM architecture core with low-power characteristics. 64Mb SPI flash + 2kb EEPROM, USB UART/USB Slave/TF card/NRF/ATK-Module Port.

(Control card module)

V. Product Demonstration Results

In April, we completed sample assembly and debugging, and brought the product to the customer site for live demonstration. A total of 5 programmed dynamic graphic loops were displayed, along with multiple static graphics. The samples were controlled via board cards, with future support for whole-device APP control. The customer expressed satisfaction with the display effect and will continue to explore the application of color-changing film on eReader cover plates, promoting multi-scenario applications of color-changing film technology.

(Launched 2026) Full-Color ePaper Local Effect Refresh Technology

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 23:10:17 +0800

I. A Pain Point Taken for Granted

In early 2025, in the R&D lab of Jinyatai Technology, engineers were testing the local refresh performance of a color ePaper digital signage display. On the screen, a bus route information area needed to update its arrival times — one of the most typical use cases for ePaper. However, when the local refresh completed, an intern engineer casually remarked: "The display updated, but it felt like it just 'snapped' into place. It would be nice if it had a transition animation like smartphones do."

This seemingly naive question sparked a months-long technical research effort.

Since its inception, the core logic of traditional ePaper local refresh technology has remained unchanged: detect which screen regions have pixel changes, drive only those regions' charged particles to rearrange, and leave other areas untouched. This logic was nearly perfect in the era of black-and-white text display — it significantly reduced power consumption, shortened refresh time, and minimized visual flicker. But as ePaper entered the full-color era and moved into medium-to-large commercial display applications, the experiential shortcoming of "refreshing content without transitions" began to surface.

In retail digital signage scenarios, when promotional posters switch, the "hard jump" of local areas appears unprofessional. In bus stop display scenarios, when arrival information updates, users need to carefully identify the differences between old and new information. Yet, the industry seemed to have accepted this "jump" as a given — after all, the physical characteristics of ePaper prevent it from achieving the high-speed refresh of LCD, and pursuing "animation effects" was considered an unrealistic expectation that defied the laws of physics.

Jinyatai Technology refused to accept this "taken for granted." They asked themselves: Must local refresh necessarily come at the cost of a "hard jump"? Could we, within the physical limits of ePaper, create a "local refresh with transitions"?

II. Technical Breakthrough: From "Functional" to "Usable"

Finding the answer proved far more difficult than anticipated.

The working principle of ePaper dictates that refresh is fundamentally "particle migration" — black, white, and colored particles move up and down under electric field drive, combining to form the target image. Every refresh is a rearrangement of particle positions. Traditional local refresh is "hard" because the driving waveform contains only instructions to go "directly from state A to state B," with no transitional control in between.

"Our initial idea was simple: could we insert some intermediate-state waveforms into the local refresh waveform sequence, allowing particles to gradually migrate to their target positions, thereby creating a gradient-like visual effect?" recalled project lead Lu Xiaoguang. "But we soon discovered this approach didn't work — ePaper particle migration is not linear. Inserting intermediate states would intensify particle oscillation, actually increasing ghosting and flicker."

The breakthrough came when the team reexamined their FPGA hardware platform. Jinyatai Technology had already accumulated deep expertise in ePaper display driving, with their proprietary Mygica-Flex display driving technology and Waveform intelligent waveform algorithm successfully addressing full-screen refresh flicker. The team realized that implementing local refresh with dynamic effects could not rely on simple waveform-level stacking — it required a fundamental architectural redesign at the TCON (timing controller) level.

The core innovation emerged from this: the team developed an FPGA-based 8-bit grayscale template mapping phase offset technology, combined with a dual-dimension lookup table algorithm, achieving "pixel-level timing control" over local refresh areas. In plain terms, this technology enables the TCON to precisely control the refresh timing and phase offset of every pixel within the local refresh area — even when all pixels share the same "start state" and "end state," their transition can be controlled through staggered refresh start times and speed curves, creating layered transition animation effects.

For example, the "gradient effect": from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner, each pixel's refresh start time is delayed by tens of milliseconds in sequence, visually creating a "left-to-right gradual reveal" effect. The "ripple effect" uses the center of the refresh area as the origin, with pixel refresh start times radiating outward in concentric circles. All these effects are executed only within the local area where content changes — unchanged areas remain static, keeping both power consumption and flicker to an absolute minimum.

In August 2025, at the Shenzhen International IoT Exhibition, Jinyatai Technology publicly showcased an ePaper digital signage equipped with this technology for the first time. Attendees witnessed with their own eyes the local area of an ePaper screen updating content with a "water ripple" effect, while the surrounding areas remained completely still — an experience never before seen in the ePaper industry. One exhibiting technical lead exclaimed: "We chose ePaper for its low power consumption, but always felt the display quality was 'a bit lacking.' This local effect refresh gives ePaper a sense of premium quality for the first time." Mr. Zuo Qiang, Secretary-General of the ePaper Alliance, highly praised the technology after observing the local effect refresh demonstration: "This is a remarkable technological innovation that gives the ePaper industry a brand-new capability to create innovative products. It is an outstanding contribution to the development of the ePaper industry."

III. From Lab to Industrialization

Technological innovation is only the first step. To move this technology from the lab to large-scale application, it needed to pass rigorous industrialization validation.

In October 2025, Jinyatai Technology's paper, "Design of Dynamic Display Transition Effects for E Ink Spectra 6 Full-Color ePaper Based on FPGA," was officially published in the national-level journal "Information Technology and Standardization." The experimental data disclosed in the paper provided quantitative support for the technology's reliability and performance advantages:

Flicker rate controlled within 4Hz, far below the human-perceptible flicker threshold;

Ghosting rate not exceeding 0.8%, on par with traditional refresh solutions, with no degradation from effect layering;

Local power consumption reduced by over 40% — because the effect control did not increase driving energy, but rather reduced ineffective particle oscillation through optimized timing design.

These data demonstrate that local effect refresh technology significantly improves user experience without "sacrificing ePaper's core advantages (low power, low flicker)." Meanwhile, the technology has been implemented across Jinyatai Technology's full range of medium-to-large ePaper products: 10-inch to 28.5-inch digital signage, single-board multi-screen bus stop displays, ePaper photo frames, and more. At international exhibitions including CES, ISE, Embedded World, and COMPUTEX in 2026, these products garnered widespread attention from global customers, with multiple leading international retail and transportation companies expressing cooperation interest.

More importantly, this technology has substantially expanded the interaction boundaries of ePaper. In commercial digital signage, local updates of brand advertising visuals can now be paired with brand-style effect transitions, enhancing the professionalism and appeal of commercial displays.

IV. Opening New Possibilities for the ePaper Industry

Looking back at the development of ePaper technology — from black-and-white to color, from static to dynamic refresh, from small to large sizes — each breakthrough has expanded its application boundaries. The significance of Jinyatai Technology's local effect refresh technology for the ePaper Innovation Gold Award may lie in this: it has, for the first time, introduced "experience design" thinking into the ePaper display field.

Previously, technological innovation in the ePaper industry focused primarily on "display performance" — higher refresh rates, lower power consumption, richer colors. This was certainly the right direction. But once these foundational performance metrics reach a certain level, "user experience refinement" becomes the new competitive dimension. Local effect refresh technology is a pioneering exploration in this direction — it does not solve the problem of "whether it can display," but rather "whether it displays well, whether it is elegant."

As the engineer's question that sparked this technical breakthrough reveals: user expectations for ePaper have evolved from "functional" to "usable" and even "enjoyable to use." Local effect refresh technology is precisely an industry-first born in response to this user demand upgrade, opening new possibilities for deeper application of ePaper in retail, transportation, office, education, and other scenarios.

(Launched 2026) Additive Printed Flexible Circuit Boards (FPC)

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:54:33 +0800

Foreword

Over the past three decades, China's flexible printed circuit (FPC) industry has grown from a blank slate to possessing the world's largest production capacity, yet it has long been trapped in a cycle of homogeneous competition based on subtractive etching. Countless small and medium-sized FPC factories remain stuck in traditional manufacturing models marked by high pollution, high costs, and long lead times, grappling with rising raw material costs for copper foil and chemical solutions on one side, and increasingly stringent environmental regulations and downstream demands for lightweight, low-carbon products on the other. As a local Shenzhen manufacturer rooted in Bao'an Shajing for over a decade — Shenzhen Bochengxin Electronics Co., Ltd. — we chose to step out of the comfort zone of mature traditional production lines. With self-developed nano conductive paste at its core, the company spent several years tackling additive printed FPC technology, completing a manufacturing revolution from "subtractive etching" to "additive printing." Today, this innovative process has achieved stable mass production in two major tracks — ePaper and notebook Mini LED backlit keyboards — completely resolving core pain points in the ePaper industry: high cost of traditional FPC components, heavy process pollution, excessive module thickness, and lengthy delivery cycles. This article, from the founder's perspective, documents Bochengxin's complete journey from a traditional factory to a technology innovator, telling an original innovation story of staying rooted in manufacturing, committing to green production, and slashing costs and emissions for the ePaper industry.

I. Industry Impasse: Three Shackles of Traditional Subtractive FPC Force an Inevitable Process Revolution

In 2011, I founded Shenzhen Bochengxin Electronics Co., Ltd. in Shajing Subdistrict, Bao'an District, Shenzhen, with registered capital of RMB 10 million, a 4,000-square-meter factory, and nearly 200 employees. Our core business covered single-sided, double-sided, and multi-layer traditional subtractive FPCs with supporting SMT processing. In the early years, strong demand from consumer electronics, notebooks, and industrial control equipment allowed us to gain a foothold in notebook keyboard backlight FPCs, industrial touchpads, and similar products. Over the course of more than a decade, the company sequentially obtained ISO9001, IATF16949, and ISO14001 certifications, was recognized as a National High-Tech Enterprise and a Shenzhen Specialized & Sophisticated SME, and holds over 20 utility model patents — establishing itself as a local FPC manufacturer with reliable delivery capability in its niche.

However, starting in 2020, the survival environment of the entire FPC industry underwent fundamental change. Three shackles tightly bound all small and medium-sized manufacturers, and Bochengxin was equally trapped.

Shackle One: The inherent high pollution and high energy consumption of traditional subtractive processes, with environmental compliance costs continuously soaring. Traditional subtractive FPC relies on flexible copper-clad laminate (FCCL) as the base material. The complete production process encompasses over ten wet-chemical steps — cutting, drilling, dry film lamination, exposure, development, etching, stripping, and immersion gold surface treatment — consuming large quantities of copper salts, developer, etchant, and precious metal gold-plating solutions throughout. The process continuously generates heavy-metal wastewater and hazardous organic sludge. The MIIT's 2023 "Regulatory Conditions for the PCB Industry" significantly tightened standards for flexible board energy consumption, wastewater recycling, and hazardous waste management. The 2025 draft revision further introduced hard targets for carbon emissions per unit product, copper recovery rate ≥95%, water reuse rate raised to 50%, and restrictions on PFAS persistent pollutant usage.

Shackle Two: Persistently high raw material costs and cutthroat price competition driven by product homogeneity. The core subtractive-process base material FCCL is heavily dependent on copper foil, whose price is chronically volatile. Over 90% of copper material is corroded into waste liquid during the etching process, yielding a material utilization rate below 30% — a staggering waste of raw materials. Downstream customers in notebooks, ePaper, and wearables keep pressing for lower prices. The low-end FPC market has low entry barriers, with numerous small factories flooding in and engaging in price wars, plunging the industry into a paradox of "growing volume without growing revenue." For ePaper-related FPC specifically: demand for ESLs, eReaders, and retail smart labels has been rising year after year, yet traditional FPC unit prices remain stubbornly high, and module thickness is hard to compress — constraining large-scale ePaper product adoption. Downstream panel makers have repeatedly called for lightweight, low-cost, low-carbon supply chain upgrades but could not find a mature process solution to deploy.

Shackle Three: Excessively long, fragmented production cycles incapable of meeting ePaper's fast iteration, ultra-thin, and miniaturized requirements. A complete production cycle for a conventional double-sided subtractive FPC lasts 6-7 days or more, with dispersed, segmented processes and low sheet-line efficiency. Meanwhile, the ePaper industry is advancing toward large sizes, colorization, ultra-thin portability, and flexible bendability — posing three rigid requirements for companion FPCs: extreme thinness, high bending reliability, and rapid prototyping and delivery. Finished traditional etched FPCs are thick; multi-layer film stacks consume module interior space. Complex circuit prototyping cycles stretch to 4-5 days. Faced with rapid new product iteration and high-mix, low-volume orders from ePaper customers, traditional processes are completely incapable.

In 2024, organized by the ePaper Industry Alliance, we visited several leading ePaper companies — Hanshow, YesTech, QY, HKC, BOE — for in-depth discussions on industry pain points. Customer feedback pointed to the core issue: ePaper pursues low power consumption, lightweight design, and sustainability; traditional etched FPCs are bulky, highly polluting, and costly — fundamentally conflicting with ePaper's green development ethos. The industry urgently needs a completely new flexible circuit manufacturing solution. Bolstered by the confidence from these discussions with leading ePaper enterprises and alliance members, I made a firm decision: we could no longer cling to a mature but backward subtractive process. We had to independently develop an entirely new FPC manufacturing technology — one that is wet-process-free, low-energy, low-cost, ultra-thin, and flexible: namely, the additive printed flexible circuit process.

At the time, the mainstream industry view was not optimistic about this route. The world's first PCB was made using an additive printing process back in 1926, but it was subsequently replaced by etching due to precision limitations. Nearly a century later, attempting to replicate or even surpass traditional FPC precision through printing technology would require enormous investment with an extremely high risk of failure. No mature mass-production equipment existed on the market, suitable nano conductive paste was entirely dependent on imports, and the R&D timeline was impossible to predict. Internal divisions also emerged within the company: existing traditional production lines were generating stable profits; investing tens of millions of RMB in new process R&D could drag down the entire business if it failed. But I have always believed that the converging trends of dual-carbon policies, green transformation of the electronics industry, and downstream demand for lightweight terminals make additive printed FPC the inevitable direction for FPC industry upgrading — and the optimal solution for the ePaper industry to break through cost and environmental barriers. Innovation in manufacturing cannot be judged by short-term returns alone; one must position for the long-term track.

II. Three-Year Breakthrough: Building the Full Additive Technology Chain from Scratch, Overcoming Materials, Equipment, and Process Hurdles

At the beginning of 2023, Bochengxin formally established a dedicated additive-method R&D team, assembling core engineers from process, equipment, materials, and quality disciplines — launching a three-year technology offensive. The entire R&D process was divided into three major phases, in which we tackled three core challenges one by one: nano conductive paste formulation, custom non-standard automated printing equipment, and double-sided circuit interconnection printing processes.

1. Materials Breakthrough: Self-Developed Silver-Copper Composite Nano Paste, Breaking Free of Imported Material Monopoly

The core foundation of the additive process is conductive paste. In the early phase, we tested imported silver and copper pastes and discovered three fatal flaws: first, excessively high curing temperatures incompatible with PET flexible substrates commonly used in ePaper; second, poor adhesion — after bending tests, traces easily detached and resistance drift exceeded specifications; third, prohibitively high unit prices that could not achieve cost reduction at scale. The R&D team spent 18 months repeatedly adjusting nano metal powder ratios, resin carriers, and dispersing additives to independently develop silver paste, copper paste, and silver-coated-copper composite nano paste tailored for the printing process. The new paste achieves low-temperature curing and can reliably form traces on any insulating substrate — PI or PET. Trace adhesion and bending resistance pass industry standard tests. At the same time, the self-developed paste reduces procurement cost by 40% compared to imported materials, solving the mass-production cost challenge at its source. Addressing the via-filling and interconnection requirements of ePaper double-sided FPCs, we specifically optimized paste filling performance to achieve complete laser blind-via filling with stable and controllable via resistance, perfectly matching the dual-layer circuit transmission needs of E Ink screens.

2. Custom Equipment: Non-Standard Sheet-to-Sheet and Roll-to-Roll Fully Automated Printing Lines, Achieving Double-Sided Circuit Formation in 2 Hours

Conventional printing equipment can only produce simple single-sided circuits and cannot meet FPC requirements for high precision, double-sided interconnection, and continuous roll-to-roll production. We partnered with equipment manufacturers to customize fully automated double-sided sheet and roll-to-roll printing production lines, integrating unwinding, precision printing, low-temperature curing, laser drilling, via filling, and AOI automated inspection into a single streamlined process — completely eliminating the full suite of traditional etching wet-chemical steps. Traditional subtractive FPC requires 24 hours to complete double-sided circuits; our custom additive production line completes the entire double-sided circuit process in just 2 hours — a 12x improvement in delivery efficiency. Automated flow lines reduce manual intervention; output per unit area increases by 300%, making capacity per equivalent factory floor space 3x that of traditional processes — significantly saving factory floor space and land resources. It perfectly matches ePaper's order patterns of small batches, rapid prototyping, and flexible switching to large-volume production.

3. Process Reconstruction: Eliminating 80% of Wet-Chemical Steps, Establishing a Fully Dry Green Manufacturing System

We comprehensively restructured the FPC manufacturing workflow, consolidating the traditional subtractive method's 8 major complex steps into 5 core steps — fundamentally changing the manufacturing logic. Traditional processes require purchasing FCCL copper-clad laminates, then completing drilling metallization, exposure etching, and immersion gold surface treatment through multiple wet-process stages. The additive method directly uses PI/PET insulating film as the substrate, forming fine traces and vias in a single printing pass — no FCCL base material needed, no black-hole copper plating, no etching/development, no immersion gold or OSP surface treatment. The entire process generates zero heavy-metal wastewater and zero hazardous etching waste liquid, achieving a truly fully dry, zero-discharge manufacturing process. Process optimization brings comprehensive performance improvements: additive single-sided board thickness is only 30μm, double-sided 50μm — far thinner than traditional etched FPCs — fitting ePaper's ultra-thin module designs. In mass production, minimum line width/space reaches 0.05mm, with ultimate precision of 0.035mm and outline tolerance of ±0.05mm, meeting ePaper's high-resolution driver circuit fine-routing requirements. The full product line passes complete reliability testing: 2kg weight 180° forward/reverse bending 10 cycles with no open circuits; 85°C/85RH high-temperature high-humidity for 72 hours with no oxidation; 24-hour salt spray test pass — fully meeting ePaper's stringent quality standards for long-term stable operation.

The R&D road was littered with setbacks — countless sample failures, paste cracking, poor circuit continuity, and substandard printing precision occurred repeatedly. Throughout 2023, the R&D team practically lived in the lab and pilot production workshop, daily adjusting paste ratios, printing pressure, curing temperatures, and laser drilling parameters — cumulatively prototyping over a thousand test samples and scrapping various base materials and paste worth over a million RMB. In June 2023, we officially debuted additive printed FPC technology at Lenovo's New Process & New Materials recommendation conference, completing stable single-sided board pilot production that same year. By June 2025, double-sided additive FPCs fully passed verification, and double-sided boards for e-cigarettes and ePaper achieved mass delivery. During the same period, the company added over ten additive-process-related patents, becoming a leading domestic enterprise in additive printed FPC patent holdings.

III. Landing in the ePaper Track: Four Core Values, Reshaping the ePaper Green Supply Chain System

Once the technology achieved mass production, we immediately deployed the additive process in the ePaper industry, developing dedicated double-sided printed FPCs for ESLs, eReaders, E Ink display backplanes, retail smart labels, and handwriting ePaper products — thoroughly resolving the four long-standing pain points of cost, environmental impact, thinness, and delivery, bringing transformative change to the ePaper industry.

1. Maximum Cost Reduction and Efficiency Gains, Accelerating ePaper Commercialization

Compared to traditional subtractive FPCs, the additive method directly reduces overall manufacturing cost by over 15%, raises material utilization above 70%, and eliminates multiple expense categories — FCCL copper-clad base material, precious metal surface treatment, and hazardous waste wastewater treatment. ePaper terminal manufacturers see significantly lower procurement costs, easing the industry-wide challenges of high prices and slow market penetration for color ePaper and large-format ESLs. Our current ePaper FPC monthly capacity reaches 7,000–8,000 square meters, reliably accepting double-sided circuit orders for E Ink screens of various sizes and adapting to the industry's scaling-up demands.

2. Full-Chain Green and Low-Carbon, Aligned with ePaper's Sustainability DNA

ePaper itself is regarded as a green display medium for its low power consumption, reusability, and blue-light-free characteristics — but traditional companion FPCs' high-pollution manufacturing creates a weak link in the industry chain's environmental performance. The additive process eliminates etching and electroplating wet steps at the source; the entire production process generates zero wastewater and no heavy-metal hazardous waste. Production energy consumption is reduced by 70% versus traditional processes, carbon emissions drop by 50%, precious metal (copper, etc.) consumption approaches zero, and water reuse demand falls to a minimum. The entire process fully complies with RoHS, REACH, and the Electronics Industry Water Pollutant Discharge Standard GB 39731-2020. It can assist ePaper enterprises in completing full-product carbon footprint accounting and meeting global brand ESG and carbon-neutral supply chain audit requirements. As the global electronics industry comprehensively rolls out green supply chains, this zero-pollution additive process fills the green manufacturing gap in the ePaper industry chain and clears environmental barriers for ePaper brand exports overseas.

3. Ultra-Thin, Flexible, High Reliability — Adaptive to ePaper Form-Factor Innovation

ePaper is evolving toward rollable, foldable, and ultra-thin portable form factors. Traditional multi-layer stacked FPC thickness consumes module interior space and constrains slim product design. Additive FPC double-sided boards measure only 50μm — eliminating multi-layer copper foil and surface treatment stack structures — dramatically reducing overall ePaper module thickness. At the same time, the printed circuit base material offers exceptional flexibility and outstanding bending resistance, accommodating flexible ePaper rollable installation requirements and replacing traditional thick copper wires, reducing module interior space occupation and improving eReader and smart label portability. For medical monitoring ePaper sensor devices, the additive process's miniaturized circuit advantages stand out, enabling ultra-thin sensor backplane fabrication for ECG monitoring and blood glucose detection, balancing comfort with long-term monitoring stability.

4. Integrated Capability, Delivering One-Stop ePaper Solutions

Leveraging the company's in-house SMT production line, additive FPCs can have driver ICs and NFC sensing components directly mounted after circuit printing is completed, achieving integrated FPC + component formation in a single pass — eliminating the traditional secondary SMT step after FPC shipment, simplifying ePaper module assembly and reducing end-customer assembly labor costs. For retail NFC-enabled ESLs, we developed double-sided additive FPCs with integrated NFC sensing circuits, offering stable read/write performance and ultra-thin profiles.

From 2025 to date, Bochengxin's additive ePaper-specific FPCs have achieved stable volume shipments. Customer feedback confirms that product yield, reliability, and cost all outperform traditional etched products. Multiple ePaper companies have simultaneously initiated production line switchover verification. The market space for additive flexible circuits in the ePaper track continues to open up. Industry data projects that by 2030, the global FPC market will reach USD 30.5 billion, with additive processes capturing an 8%-10% share — roughly USD 3 billion — of which China accounts for 60%-70%. ePaper, Mini LED, and medical electronics are the core growth tracks for additive methods, with vast market expansion potential.

IV. Staying True to the Original Vision: A Niche-Track Innovation Leader, Pursuing a Long-Term Industrial Future Through Original Processes

Looking back on Bochengxin's decade-plus journey — from establishing the factory in 2011 making traditional subtractive FPCs, to deciding in 2023 to independently develop additive innovative processes, to today's mass production in both ePaper and notebook keyboard domains — what sustained us through this difficult innovation path is the vision established at the company's founding: "Commit to being an innovation leader in niche segments, drive industry transformation through additive FPC process innovation, create value for customers, and build platforms for employees."

As a local private manufacturing enterprise rooted in Shenzhen's Bao'an District, we deeply understand that for small and medium-sized manufacturers to break through, they cannot rely on low-price competition — only original technology and differentiated innovation can build a long-term moat. In the notebook keyboard niche track, we are already the pioneer of stainless-steel FPCs and Mini LED backlight printed FPCs, first to achieve mass production of single-key independent-light-source Mini LED keyboard FPCs, with module thickness compressed to 0.3mm and backlight power consumption reduced by 65% — extending notebook battery life by up to 3.5 hours — serving the supply chains of Lenovo, Huawei, Dell, and Apple. The ePaper track is the new core battlefield for our green process deployment. We hope to leverage our independently developed additive printing technology to drive the entire ePaper industry chain's low-carbon upgrade.

Innovation is never a shortcut achieved overnight but a commitment to long-term perseverance. Through three years of R&D, we withstood financial pressure, technical failure risks, and market skepticism, steadfastly mastering the full suite of core technologies — paste, printing, via filling — without relying on external technology licensing. We have cumulatively obtained dozens of additive-process-related patents and are one of the few domestic enterprises with double-sided roll-to-roll additive FPC mass production capability. Looking ahead, we will continue increasing R&D investment along two major directions: first, optimizing conductive paste performance and developing highly transparent conductive inks to expand into transparent ePaper and transparent display FPC markets; second, upgrading ultra-large-format roll-to-roll printing lines, planning 500×1200mm large-format processes to meet the demands of large-size commercial ePaper and industrial display panels.

At the same time, we always keep in mind the social responsibility of manufacturing enterprises. The water pollution and heavy-metal pollution caused by traditional etching processes are painful issues the entire electronics manufacturing industry cannot avoid. The additive fully dry process not only helps enterprises reduce environmental compliance burdens but also provides downstream ePaper and consumer electronics brands with a genuinely green and sustainable supply chain choice, contributing to China's dual-carbon goals and implementing the MIIT's green manufacturing upgrade requirements for PCBs. We are committed to continuously promoting the zero-pollution additive printing process, driving synchronized green transformation of upstream and downstream base materials, equipment, and paste supply chains, and promoting the overall phase-out of high-pollution legacy etching lines in the FPC industry.

For the ePaper industry, thinness, low consumption, and green credentials define the long-term development trajectory, and companion flexible circuits are core components determining product cost, form factor, and environmental attributes. Bochengxin's additive printed FPC innovation is not merely the company's own technological breakthrough — it provides the entire ePaper industry with a completely new foundational manufacturing solution. This application for the 2026 ePaper Innovation "First Launch" Award under the Electronics Industry Alliance is both a summary of our three years of technological achievement and a hope that, through this nomination, we can promote additive green manufacturing processes across the industry and attract more industry chain partners to jointly explore the infinite possibilities of printed flexible electronics.

Conclusion

A century ago, the world's first PCB was made using an additive printing process. Today, a century later, Bochengxin — standing on Shenzhen's local manufacturing foundation — has revived the additive process through a triple innovation in nano materials, precision printing, and automated production lines, completing a retro-innovation in flexible circuit manufacturing. The journey from a traditional subtractive etching factory to an additive green FPC innovation leader has been filled with challenges, yet profoundly meaningful.

Going forward, Bochengxin will always uphold the core value of "customer-centric, results-oriented," continuing to deepen its presence in four niche tracks: ePaper, notebook Mini LED, medical sensing, and automotive flexible electronics. We will relentlessly iterate and optimize the additive printing process, using original green manufacturing technology to enable low-cost, lightweight, and low-carbon mass adoption of the ePaper industry, writing a new chapter for China's flexible electronics manufacturing through industrial innovation. We firmly believe that only through continuous process innovation and steadfast commitment to green and sustainable development can Chinese manufacturing hold core sway in the global electronics industry chain and stride toward an even farther future.

WenXianTong: ePaper Assistive Communication Device for the Hearing Impaired Wins Gold Award (Launche

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:23:27 +0800

In China, there are over 27.8 million people with hearing impairments. They appear to blend into everyday life, yet remain trapped in a silent corner, enduring communication struggles that most people cannot imagine. At the hospital, they miss the doctor's instructions; in workplace meetings, they cannot keep up with team discussions; while shopping, they often miss what the shop assistant says; during family chats, they miss those gentle, everyday exchanges. Hearing loss is an invisible wall — it does not affect one's appearance, but it isolates them from the warmth of human connection. Many hearing-impaired individuals are often misjudged as indifferent or slow because they cannot hear clearly or respond promptly. Over time, they gradually withdraw from social interactions and close themselves off. For years, traditional hearing aids and generic speech-to-text tools have failed to address the real-world pain points: severe latency, inability to recognize dialects, unusable in noisy environments, privacy risks, and insufficient battery life for daily use. It is precisely these long-unfilled needs that gave rise to WenXianTong. Powered by a deep integration of self-developed chips and AI technology, it achieves breakthroughs across both hardware and software, building a reliable, secure, and user-friendly barrier-free communication bridge for the hearing-impaired community.

The birth of this product was never about piling up technology for its own sake. It stems from the R&D team's deep empathy for and field research into the real lives of the hearing-impaired. The team discovered that most assistive tools on the market can only handle basic Mandarin transcription and simply cannot adapt to real-life, diversified scenarios. Many cloud-based transcription apps not only suffer from lag, severely disrupting conversational flow and affecting normal communication, but also pose privacy risks through potential leaks of conversation records. More critically, the majority of grassroots hearing-impaired users communicate primarily in local dialects, yet most devices are virtually useless for dialect recognition — rendering them practically unusable. Beyond that, traditional device screens are harsh on the eyes, causing fatigue during prolonged use; the devices are bulky and inconvenient to carry; and power consumption is high with short battery life. One by one, these real-world frustrations strengthened the R&D team's resolve: to build a dedicated communication aid truly suited to the daily, safe, durable, and all-scenario needs of the hearing-impaired.

To fundamentally overcome the industry's long-standing issues of high latency, weak computing power, and cloud dependency, the R&D team spent years developing a proprietary inference chip — WenXianTong's core technological moat. Unlike general-purpose chips designed for broad applications, this self-developed chip is purpose-built with an architecture optimized for real-time speech transcription, delivering more precise computing resource allocation and higher operational efficiency. It enables the device to perform high-intensity AI computations locally, completely eliminating reliance on cloud data. Leveraging this self-developed computing power, the device features a newly iterated AI speech recognition model achieving up to 97% Mandarin accuracy, capable of accurately capturing soft tones, short sentences, and natural speech patterns in everyday conversation, maximally restoring authentic dialogue and eliminating fuzzy, erroneous, or distorted transcriptions.

Recognizing China's diverse linguistic environment, the team specifically tackled the challenge of dialect recognition, breaking through technical bottlenecks such as mixed accents and non-standard pronunciation to support real-time transcription of multiple regional dialects. Whether at a township hospital visit, a market shopping trip, or casual dialect conversation among family and friends, WenXianTong delivers fast and accurate transcription, effectively bridging regional language barriers. Through deep co-optimization of chip and algorithm, the device significantly reduces display latency, thoroughly solving the classic problem of "the person has finished speaking but the text only appears afterward" that plagues traditional devices, achieving synchronous voice-to-text presentation so hearing-impaired users can smoothly keep pace with conversations and enjoy a natural, equal two-way communication experience.

In hardware design, WenXianTong consistently puts people first, refining every detail based on real user scenarios. In daily life, the vast majority of communication takes place amid noise — the clamor of streets, shopping malls, hospitals, and offices has always been the biggest obstacle to hearing-impaired communication. To address this pain point, WenXianTong is equipped with dual-microphone noise reduction and directional pickup technology. Through the coordinated work of two microphones, it precisely locks onto the speaker's voice directly ahead while intelligently filtering out wind noise, ambient clutter, and background noise, focusing on the effective sound signal. Even in crowded, acoustically complex public settings, it stably captures voices and delivers clear transcription, truly enabling barrier-free communication across all scenarios.

The screen is the core medium through which hearing-impaired users receive conversation information. To accommodate extended reading needs, WenXianTong abandons harsh conventional electronic screens in favor of an eye-protecting E Ink display. With its paper-like viewing experience free of blue light and flicker, prolonged viewing causes minimal visual fatigue, fully safeguarding users' eye health. At the same time, the team deeply optimized the display algorithm, and combined with the self-developed chip's extreme processing speed, compresses the entire transcription-rendering-display pipeline, achieving seamless voice-to-text synchronization with a smooth and natural viewing experience. The device body is also designed for both portability and practicality — compact, lightweight, and easy to stow, it fits effortlessly into a backpack or pocket, ready to be taken out for commutes, work, medical visits, or gatherings, enabling barrier-free communication anytime, anywhere.

Privacy and security are the bottom lines the team upholds. Everyday conversations, medical consultations, and workplace communications all contain substantial personal and private information. Traditional cloud-based transcription devices require uploading voice data, creating a serious risk of information leaks and data misuse that discourages many users from trusting such tools. WenXianTong leverages its powerful local computing capability to process all data entirely on-device — voice capture, intelligent recognition, and text display are all completed locally without any cloud upload, eliminating privacy leak risks at the source and ensuring peace of mind with every conversation.

Battery life determines everyday practicality, while portability directly impacts user experience. WenXianTong delivers both long battery life and lightweight portability. Addressing the dual shortcomings of traditional assistive devices — high power consumption, short battery life requiring frequent charging, combined with bulky, inconvenient form factors — WenXianTong optimizes its chip power architecture and pairs it with low-power intelligent operation algorithms. While maintaining high-precision, low-latency transcription performance, it minimizes energy consumption to the greatest extent. A single full charge supports all-day high-frequency use, perfectly suiting users' uninterrupted needs for going out, working, and running errands — delivering long battery life, always ready to use. On the other hand, the device has been meticulously streamlined: compact, lightweight, and mini-sized, it can be effortlessly slipped into a pocket or backpack, truly achieving take-anywhere, carry-anywhere portability, unrestricted by setting or space, always ready to enable barrier-free communication. Building on solid performance, battery life, and portability, WenXianTong breaks free from the conventional model of hearing-impaired assistive devices to create a cost-effective, broadly accessible solution, filling the gap left by mainstream assistive devices that remain out of reach for many.

Currently, cochlear implants are the mainstream approach for restoring hearing in individuals with severe hearing loss. However, these invasive medical devices come with high barriers, high costs, and considerable risks, making mass adoption difficult. Even after national centralized procurement has brought prices down, the combined costs of the implant device, surgery, and rehabilitation support still run to tens of thousands of yuan, while imported high-end products can reach ¥100,000 to ¥300,000, with ongoing costs for maintenance, replacement parts, and system upgrades — an enormous burden for ordinary families. At the same time, cochlear implants require surgical implantation with inherent medical risks, followed by lengthy post-operative rehabilitation. Limited by age and physical condition, many hearing-impaired individuals cannot qualify for this option, falling far short of meeting the everyday communication needs of the broader population.

Leveraging the lightweight computing architecture of its self-developed chip and integrated hardware-software design, WenXianTong delivers a low-cost, non-invasive, risk-free, highly adaptable alternative. No surgery required, no medical qualification needed, no rehabilitation training — simply power on for accurate transcription. Elderly users, teenagers, and individuals with mild to severe hearing loss can all use it with confidence, completely circumventing the medical risks and qualification barriers of invasive devices. Compared to the high cost and long-term maintenance expenses of cochlear implants, WenXianTong is affordably priced with no additional post-purchase costs, using extreme value for money to break down the high-cost barrier of hearing assistive technology, enabling families with limited means to easily own a professional barrier-free communication tool — truly making technology accessible to every hearing-impaired user.

From core technological breakthroughs in self-developed inference chips and AI intelligent transcription algorithms, to meticulous hardware refinement in dual-mic noise reduction, eye-protecting E Ink display, and portable form factor, to comprehensive advantages in local privacy computing, long battery life, and low-cost accessibility — WenXianTong has always been rooted in genuine user needs, avoiding superficial feature stacking and focusing solely on solving real communication challenges. Once, countless hearing-impaired individuals missed job opportunities, drifted away from family and friends, and feared social situations because of communication barriers, trapped in a silent predicament. Today, the dual innovation of hardware and software, together with affordability and accessibility, has broken down the wall between the hearing and silent worlds, allowing hearing-impaired users to "see sound and understand conversation" in real time, integrating into life, work, and social circles with equality and ease.

The most moving value of technology lies in gently embracing every community. The innovation story of WenXianTong is not merely a technological iteration and product upgrade — it is a heartfelt practice of "tech for good." Rooted in hardcore self-developed technology and underpinned by humanistic care, it dissolves communication barriers between people with precise, secure, convenient, and durable barrier-free communication experiences, breaking through identity and scenario limitations. It empowers millions of hearing-impaired individuals to cast off the shackles of silence, confidently embracing a complete, equal, and beautiful life — illuminating every silent moment with light and warmth.

(Launched 2026) ePaper Music Badge Phone Stand

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 20:08:44 +0800

In today's consumer market, designer toy culture has become a mainstream lifestyle symbol for young people. From streetwear and backpack decorations to desk ornaments, distinctive and stylish accessories are highly sought after. Meanwhile, people's demands for everyday carry items have grown increasingly diverse: they want products that are both visually striking and functionally capable of solving real needs. However, two product categories remain fundamentally disconnected: traditional designer badges and decorative pins focus purely on aesthetics with no practical utility, while standard digital accessories such as phone stands and portable speakers offer full functionality but suffer from homogenized, cold designs that lack personality and aesthetic appeal.

On one side are trendy toys that look great but are all form and no function; on the other are everyday tools that work well but have no personality. Consumers are forced to choose between "good-looking" and "useful." Recognizing this industry pain point and market trend, we established a core design philosophy of "designer toy + practicality," combining the popular original-style badge form, trendy aesthetics, and cutting-edge smart hardware technology to create a crossover innovation — the original-style badge multifunctional ePaper smartphone stand. We aim to break the boundary between designer toys and practical digital accessories, making one everyday carry item that serves both as a statement piece and a capable daily assistant, precisely meeting consumers' desire for "aesthetics first, multi-purpose, and self-expression."

As a classic designer toy accessory that has been popular for years, the badge holds a firm place in the young designer toy market with its rounded, appealing shape and versatile decorative properties. The original ecological style is the current mainstream aesthetic — rejecting excessive embellishment in favor of simple, natural forms that suit anime, artsy, and casual styles across various outfits and settings. However, traditional badges have prominent shortcomings: fixed patterns that cannot be changed, quickly fading novelty, and purely decorative single-purpose functionality. Meanwhile, smart digital products on the market mostly follow industrial design language with rigid lines and similar styles, making them difficult to integrate into designer toy culture and unable to meet users' desires for personalized fashion and desktop ambiance.

Staying true to the creative vision of "designer toy as form, practicality as core," we first deeply replicated the classic original-style badge form in the exterior design. Continuing the rounded, full silhouette of designer toy badges while discarding cold mechanical edges, we created an overall shape that feels warm to the touch and visually soft. The dimensions strictly follow mainstream badge standards — lightweight, compact, and versatile for any carry configuration. Paired with the included safety pin, it can be attached to clothing, backpacks, and messenger bags like a regular designer badge, becoming a finishing touch to any outfit. The included lanyard also allows it to be hung on desks, headboards, or in cars, transforming into a desktop designer toy ornament. We adhere to original-style minimalist design with no unnecessary flashy decorations, preserving the pure texture of the designer toy itself so the product naturally blends into everyday fashion, home, and office scenarios. Whether campus students, trend enthusiasts, or arts lovers, all can use this product to express personal style.

Beyond replicating the designer toy exterior, we upgraded the experience with cutting-edge technology, fundamentally rewriting the industry shortcoming of "unchangeable patterns" in traditional badges. The front of the product features a commercial-grade ePaper (E Ink) display, upgrading the fixed imagery of traditional designer toys to freely customizable dynamic visuals — this is our core innovation combining designer toy appeal with technology. Through the dedicated AuraHonor APP, users can freely switch display content: they can choose from the platform's built-in library of illustrations, anime, landscapes, and other trendy graphics, or upload their own selfies, pet photos, original artwork, and personalized text. Changing the display daily — favorite anime character today, soothing landscape tomorrow, holiday-themed graphics for special occasions — gives a single designer badge infinite freshness. No more buying multiple badges; one product unlocks a thousand styles.

The technical characteristics of the E Ink display also make this designer toy accessory both eye-friendly and long-lasting. Unlike conventional electronic screens, the E Ink display simulates a paper-like viewing experience with naturally soft visuals. Even when used as a desktop ornament for extended periods or worn and occasionally checked, it will not strain the eyes. Additionally, the E Ink display consumes power only when switching images, with near-zero power consumption during static display. Combined with an optimized circuit design, the device achieves 7–15 days of ultra-long standby time on a full charge. For designer toy enthusiasts who frequently travel, commute, or go on outings, there is no need for frequent charging.

Beyond the designer toy exterior and visual experience, we deeply explored everyday usage scenarios, integrating multiple practical functions into the compact body to truly realize the "designer toy + practicality" design core — achieving "maximum aesthetics, solid capability." Breaking free from the purely decorative limitations of traditional designer toys and the single-function constraints of ordinary stands, we created a five-in-one versatile form where one product covers multiple daily needs.

The body features a foldable structure that instantly transforms into a stable phone stand. Whether watching shows at home or joining video conferences at the office, it holds the phone securely. A built-in portable makeup mirror extends the carry-accessory attribute, allowing touch-ups and grooming during commutes or trips. A built-in highly stable Bluetooth module connects to the phone to play music, podcasts, and audiobooks, turning the designer toy into a mini speaker for a personal audio atmosphere during commutes and leisure moments. Addressing everyday pain points, we also added two smart features: incoming call notification and device finder — so important calls are never missed when the device is on the desk, and the compact size as a carry accessory solves the problem of easily losing small items.

From designer decorative badge and personalized digital photo frame to phone stand, portable makeup mirror, and Bluetooth speaker — five functions integrated into one. No longer needing to carry multiple items, one designer toy accessory handles decoration, entertainment, office, and travel scenarios, perfectly matching consumers' preference for "simplifying everyday carry and pursuing multi-purpose products."

To further enhance the user experience, we included a full set of accessories that amplify the designer toy's portability and scene adaptability. The original safety pin restores the classic badge wearing style, and the lanyard supports hanging display or trendy neck-wear. The device uses a universal Type-C charging port, compatible with the vast majority of charging cables on the market — no need to carry a dedicated cable when traveling. The operation logic is also designed to be minimal and intuitive: hold the power button for 3 seconds to turn on/off, short press to switch screen images, with a status indicator providing clear feedback on charging and battery level. Users of all ages can quickly get started.

On the software side, the R&D team extensively tested and optimized for both iOS and Android. The APP's background running logic was deeply refined, Bluetooth connection stability was improved, and common issues such as permission adaptation and background disconnection were resolved. Users simply enable Bluetooth, location, and network on their phone, then follow the guided instructions to quickly complete device pairing. On Android, enabling background running permissions enables long-term stable connection. From hardware structure, screen display, and audio transmission to software algorithms and system adaptation, we conducted hundreds of rounds of testing and iteration — ensuring designer toy exterior quality while solidifying practical performance, so the creativity goes beyond surface level and quality withstands long-term use.

In today's consumer market, designer toys are no longer a niche hobby but a lifestyle integrated into mainstream culture. When purchasing products, consumers have moved beyond the single criteria of "function only" or "looks only" — aesthetics, personality, practicality, and value for money have become the four core demands. Traditional designer toys face the bottleneck of insufficient functionality, while traditional digital accessories are trapped in aesthetic homogenization. Our original-style badge smart stand, based on the "designer toy + practicality" design philosophy, precisely captures current consumer trends and offers a new market solution.

It is a trend-following original-style badge that, with its classic form and customizable display, becomes a stylish accent for outfits and desktops, satisfying young people's desire for self-expression. It is also a fully practical smart digital product that integrates stand, mirror, speaker, and digital photo frame in one, solving various small inconveniences at home, in the office, and on the go. It breaks the dimensional wall between designer toys and practical digital accessories, making trends no longer just impractical decorations and tools no longer cold, monotonous accessories.

From the exterior that follows the original-style designer badge form, using the versatile screen to give designer toys new vitality; to the internal integration of multiple practical functions, fulfilling the design intent of combining designer toy appeal with utility; to comprehensive hardware and software refinement, balancing aesthetics, experience, and quality — every design choice stems from insight into market trends and understanding of consumer preferences.

We have always believed that excellent innovative products are a two-way pursuit of trend aesthetics and practical value. This crossover smart designer toy accessory uses trends as its shell, technology as its skeleton, and practicality as its core — satisfying the public's pursuit of designer toy aesthetics, personality, and freshness while delivering the convenient, efficient, and durable use value of digital products.

In an accessory category plagued by severe homogenization, we are opening a new track with the differentiated approach of "designer toy + practicality." Looking ahead, we will continue to follow trend directions, dig deep into user needs, stay true to our design vision, and continuously refine the product. We hope this small ePaper smart badge can win you over with its trendy appearance and accompany you with its solid functionality — bringing trends into daily life, letting technology warm life, and becoming a carry-along companion for every user that combines both aesthetics and capability.

(Launched 2026) Ultra-Portable Secondary Screen ePaper Reader

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 19:53:41 +0800

I. The Era's Dilemma: When Reading Meets the Fragmented Digital Flood

When the average global user spends over 156 minutes per day scrolling short videos, when fragmented moments—commuting, queuing, lunch breaks, before bed—are constantly carved up by algorithm-driven information feeds, we find ourselves in an era of "information surplus, attention scarcity." For countless people who want to read and grow, "want to read but can't focus; want to improve but don't know where to start" has become a common daily struggle.

Looking back at over a decade of ePaper industry development, the market has remained trapped in the single narrative of "professional eReaders." Manufacturers continuously stack screen size, resolution, and refresh rate specs, yet rarely address the core question: "Can users actually take the device out and use it?" Traditional E Ink readers are bulky and costly to carry, mostly confined to home or office use, ill-suited for modern fragmented lifestyles. Meanwhile, mobile reading apps, though portable, cannot escape ad pushes and social notification interruptions—often "open the app to read, end up scrolling short videos for half an hour."

On one side, the social demand for reading and lifelong growth continues to rise; on the other, the "barrier to action" of existing reading tools remains high—professional readers are "too heavy, too cumbersome," phone reading is "too cluttered, too distracting." The vast gap in between has become a blind spot no one in the industry has explored.

As the pioneer of the "ultra-portable ePaper" category, Shenzhen Xiaohu Xingtong Technology has questioned from its inception: Must ePaper's value be confined to "a screen for reading"? Is there a form that can free reading from the burden of "needing special preparation," truly integrating it into daily life and making it accessible?

With this thinking, we embarked on the R&D journey of the Yuexingtong X3. From its inception, it was never "just another small reader"—it is our complete answer to "how to rebuild reading habits in a fragmented era." Through the novel form of a "phone secondary screen," it transforms reading from "a specialized activity for specific scenarios" into "an anytime, anywhere daily habit."

II. Form Revolution: Sticking the Reader onto the Phone, Redefining Portability

Building an E Ink screen that fits in any pocket and travels with the phone was the first core goal of the X3 project. But "small" was never the goal—"small and usable" was the real challenge. In a limited form factor, we needed to balance display quality, battery life, interaction, and structural reliability. Every parameter trade-off reflected deep consideration of user scenarios.

1. Ultimate Lightweight: 59g of Portable Reading Freedom

The Yuexingtong X3 measures just 5.1mm thin and weighs only 59g—about the size of a bank card, lighter than some phone cases. Through its magnetic design, it attaches directly to the back of a phone, commuting, traveling, and going everywhere with the user without extra storage and with virtually unnoticeable weight burden.

To achieve this extreme lightness, we refined the hardware extensively: the ESP32-C3 as the main control chip ensures stable performance while strictly controlling power consumption; a PC material frame balances structural strength with thinness; a 650mAh battery, through repeated power optimization, delivers "up to one week of fragmented reading" battery life, eliminating users' concern about frequent charging.

More importantly, this "magnetic + ultra-light" form gave birth to the signature "flip to read" interaction: the phone's front side shows noisy social, entertainment, and work information; flip to the back, and it's a pure, distraction-free E Ink reading space. A simple flip completes the scene switch from "digital flood to quiet reading," reducing the barrier to starting reading to the absolute minimum—no need to find a device, no boot-up wait, no resisting the phone's entertainment temptations. When you want to read, just flip.

2. Scenario-Driven Trade-offs: Rejecting Spec Stacking, Focusing on Core Experience

During X3's development, we repeatedly faced the "should we add this feature" dilemma: touchscreen? Front light? More complex features? In the end, we chose to "subtract."

We clearly understood that X3's core scenario is fragmented light reading: reading novels during commutes, essays during lunch breaks, a few pages of news while queuing. Its mission is to "fill fragmented time," not to "replace deep reading devices." A touchscreen would add thickness and power consumption; a front light would increase cost and doesn't suit most people's daytime fragmented reading habits—these seemingly "spec-enhancing" features would actually deviate from the product's core positioning and make users pay for features they won't use.

We focused all technical investment on polishing the core experience: a 3.68-inch E Ink display with 528x792 resolution and 259PPI, delivering clear, detailed visuals with a paper-like feel that ensures reading comfort; 6 physical buttons (4 main + 2 side) with customizable key mapping, enabling one-handed page turning, navigation, and confirmation—adapting to commuting, standing, and various mobile scenarios; an optimized refresh strategy that forces a full refresh after N pages, minimizing ghosting and achieving a smooth reading experience on a small screen.

III. Experience Elevation: More Than a Reader, a Multi-Function Low-Distraction Secondary Screen

If the "ultra-portable magnetic form" is X3's physical innovation, then its "reading + information secondary screen + personalized display" multi-function positioning is its redefinition of ePaper's value. We've always believed that an E Ink screen carried everywhere shouldn't be limited to reading—it can be a low-distraction information window, a personalized decoration, a multi-function EDC carrier integrated into daily life.

1. Vision Mode: A Distraction-Free Light Information Portal

In today's era of phone information overload, getting weather, schedule, and news requires unlocking the phone, opening an app, then getting sidetracked by pop-ups and push notifications. "Just wanted to check the weather, ended up scrolling short videos for twenty minutes" has become many people's daily reality.

Addressing this pain point, X3 features the "Vision" module: leveraging Wi-Fi connectivity and RTC clock capabilities, it aggregates weather, RSS feeds, news, and schedules for display on the E Ink screen. Users don't need to unlock their phones—just a glance at the E Ink screen on the back provides all key information, both efficiently and completely avoiding phone distractions.

This "low-distraction information access" design embodies our commitment to "attention protection": in an era where algorithms constantly compete for user attention, Yuexingtong chose to go against the tide, helping users reclaim their attention.

2. All-Scenario Reading: Balancing Local Stability and Cloud Expansion

For reading capabilities, X3 follows a "reliable locally, expandable via cloud" approach: native support for Epub and TXT formats ensures stable offline reading; the companion app extends support for text-only PDF, Mobi, and proprietary XTC fast-reading and XTCH HD reading formats to meet diverse reading needs.

To lower the barrier to transferring books, we offer three methods: traditional memory card expansion (16GB standard, up to 256GB supported), QR code transfer, and wireless app transfer. Books and articles seen on the phone can be pushed to X3 with one tap, achieving the seamless flow of "collect on phone, read on E Ink."

We also polished numerous reading details: multi-level adjustments for font, line spacing, and paragraph spacing to suit different preferences; bookmarks, chapter navigation, auto-page-turn, and night mode inversion are all included; reading progress is persistently saved, so even when switching devices, you can resume from where you left off.

3. Personalized Static Display: From Tool to "Electronic Badge"—An Unexpected Surprise

When X3 was first designed, custom wallpapers were just an "icing on the cake" feature: supporting custom sleep/standby wallpapers, EPUB cover wallpapers, and Vision covers, so the device could serve as a desktop decoration when not reading.

But after launch, we received far more user feedback than expected—people took this feature to countless new levels: some turned favorite anime characters and idol photos into wallpapers, making X3 an "electronic badge" to wear; others turned schedules and to-do lists into wallpapers as portable reminder boards; still others put family photos inside as a mini digital photo frame.

Users' spontaneous creativity reinforced our conviction: ePaper's value extends far beyond "reading." It can be a medium for self-expression, an aesthetic desktop ornament, a personal item carrying emotions and preferences. This "user co-creation" surprise has also become an important driving force for our continued product iteration.

IV. Ecosystem Loop: From Single Product to Lifestyle—A Long-Term Vision

A truly innovative product is never isolated hardware, but a complete ecosystem of "hardware + software + service + community." Yuexingtong has never been just a hardware company—our goal is to build a complete experience around "lightweight lifelong growth," with X3 as the core entry point.

1. Xingtong Cloud: Seamless Reading Experience

Powered by the Xingtong Cloud ecosystem, X3 achieves seamless multi-device data sync: reading progress, book files, personalized settings, and wallpaper resources are all cloud-stored. Even when switching devices, simply logging in restores the familiar reading environment—no need to re-transfer books or reconfigure settings.

More importantly, the cloud ecosystem bridges "phone content" and "E Ink reading": articles, social media posts, and web news seen on the phone can be pushed to X3 with one tap via the app, saved for fragmented-time reading. This "collect-push-read" content flow loop frees users from the "bookmark and forget" dilemma, truly putting fragmented time to use.

2. Continuous OTA: Making the Device Newer Over Time

We've always believed that product delivery to the user is just the beginning of service. X3 supports HTTP OTA upgrades, and our R&D team continuously iterates firmware to optimize experiences and add features—from improving PDF layout to adding batch wallpaper import; from enriching Vision's news sources to optimizing button sensitivity—many updates come directly from community feedback.

For users, they're not buying static hardware but a continuously growing service. Even devices long on the market can gain new features and experiences through OTA. This is our practice of "long-termism": not one-time transactions, but growing the product together with users.

3. User Co-Creation: Building the Brand Together

Yuexingtong's users are never mere "consumers"—they are our "cloud shareholders," participants in product co-creation. From X3 feature suggestions to wallpaper community content sharing to creative ideas for brand events, user voices have always been our most important decision-making basis.

Today, our community has formed a unique cultural atmosphere: some share beautifully crafted wallpapers, some exchange reading insights and productivity tips, some proactively help new users with questions. This community warmth, spontaneously built by users, is Yuexingtong's most precious brand asset, transforming our product from "a tool" into "a spiritual carrier for like-minded people."

V. Value and Outlook: Opening a New Track in the ePaper Industry

The birth of Yuexingtong X3 is not just a product innovation, but an expansion of the ePaper industry's boundaries. It breaks free from the traditional reader's vicious cycle of "competing on specs, sizes, and prices," opening the new track of "phone secondary screen + ultra-portable reading," moving ePaper from "niche digital product" to "mass everyday EDC accessory" in a broader market.

1. User Value: Reclaiming Time Autonomy

For users, X3 delivers far more than "a portable reader"—it's a more autonomous, lighter lifestyle. With extremely low barriers to action, it helps users convert fragmented time consumed by short videos and information feeds back into reading and growth time. With a pure, distraction-free experience, it helps users guard a small quiet space in an information-overloaded era.

As our brand philosophy states: we never make "useful tools," but "companionship that makes important things accessible." When reading no longer requires "special preparation," when growth no longer requires "gritting teeth to persist," positive habits can truly integrate into daily life and become part of living.

2. Industry Value: Expanding ePaper's Imaginable Boundaries

As the overall ePaper industry slows and homogenization intensifies, X3's "ultra-portable + secondary screen" innovative form proves that ePaper still has many untapped application scenarios. It can be the phone's second screen, a desktop information ornament, a personalized carry-along decoration—these new scenarios open new growth space for the entire industry.

Meanwhile, our model of "lightweight hardware + software ecosystem + user co-creation" provides new development thinking for the industry: ePaper competition shouldn't remain at hardware spec zero-sum games, but should move toward multi-dimensional competition in experience, ecosystem, and brand value.

3. Future Outlook: Making Lightweight Growth Accessible

X3 is just our starting point. Going forward, we will continue deepening the ultra-portable ePaper track—on one hand, continuously iterating hardware products to polish more refined form and experience; on the other, continually improving the Xingtong Cloud ecosystem, connecting more quality content, expanding more secondary screen scenarios, so this small E Ink screen can create greater value for users.

We also look forward to exploring more ePaper possibilities with upstream and downstream industry partners, driving the entire industry from "hardware involution" toward "value upgrade," making ultra-portable ePaper part of more people's lives, so everyone can easily have their own quiet reading time in a fragmented era.

From a screen to a lifestyle; from a product to an ecosystem loop. The innovation story of Yuexingtong X3 is our complete answer to "how reading integrates into contemporary life," and our practice of the brand mission "making lightweight growth accessible." In the future, we will carry this original intention forward, continuing to pioneer the ultra-portable ePaper track, together with all users, guarding the warmth of reading and the power of growth in a fragmented era.

The Decompression Artifact for the Youth: ePaper Pocket Prophet

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:37:04 +0800

When answers are easier to come by than ever, why do we want to create an "ePaper Pocket Oracle"?

Truth be told, we have probably never had such easy access to answers as we do today.

Almost any question can be quickly searched, compared, and categorized: what to eat, which one to buy, whether to go or stay, whether to start now or wait a while. Open your phone, type in a few keywords, or ask an AI, and a string of seemingly reasonable suggestions will appear on your screen in moments. We are never short on information or methods, and even our emotions come with ready-made scripts and solutions.

The strange thing is that while answers have become easier to obtain, the act of making a decision hasn't necessarily become any easier.

Often, what exhausts us isn't the monumental choices that alter the course of our lives, but those tiny, frequent, and recurring questions in our daily routine. They aren't worth serious analysis, yet they pop up throughout the day, like faint noise, continuously draining our attention and willpower. What should I have for lunch? Should I keep this appointment? Should I place this order? Should I reply to this message now or later? Individually, these questions are trivial, but the repeated hesitation causes them to accumulate into a persistent form of mental friction.

More subtly, we seem to have grown accustomed to waiting for an external validation before taking action.

Search engines, recommendations, rankings, reviews, social media, and algorithmic feeds—almost every system is designed to help us find a "seemingly correct" direction faster. Yet precisely because of this, many people find it increasingly difficult to make a choice of their own without references, endorsements, or standard answers.

It is precisely in this state that we began to think: what people really lack today might not be more answers, but a lighter response. Not more complex analysis, and not another portal that drags you back into the endless information stream. Instead, we need something that provides a sufficiently direct, light, and burden-free feedback in those small but real moments, allowing those minor, stalling problems to finally move forward.

The Significance of Being Carried

Later, our team members realized that the value of things we carry with us long-term often lies beyond their mere functions.

When discussing "what kind of objects do people keep with them," someone recalled a quote from a fashion marketing mentor during their student days: Perfume is important not just because it smells good, but because it integrates into one's life rhythm. A spritz before leaving the house signals the start of the day; the familiar scent on your wrists and collar slowly transforms into a state of mind, a memory, or even a part of one's self-identity.

This led us to re-evaluate those small items that people naturally keep by their side.

It might be a headphone case, a keychain, a bag charm, a perfume, a small ornament, or even just something they habitually hold in their hands. They are not necessarily powerful, high-frequency, or even strictly "necessary," but they slowly participate in a person's emotions and rhythm through daily repetition. Often, we carry them not because they solve major problems, but because, in specific moments, they offer companionship, a reminder, or a very subtle yet real psychological hint.

The Pocket Oracle is closer to this kind of existence.

It is not just a gadget packed with a few features, nor is it an electronic item manufactured just for "fun." More accurately, it is a "light-response device" that you carry with you: you don't need to use it all the time, and it won't proactively disturb you. But in certain moments—like when you are hesitant, bored, restless, or just want to add a little something different to your day—you will think of it, pick it up, press it, and receive a response.

It is precisely for this reason that we stopped viewing it merely as a hardware product.

It should be light enough to naturally enter your daily life; small enough to slip into a pocket or hang on a bag; and restrained enough that it doesn't need to prove itself through complex functions, but rather, on a scale closer to life, slowly becomes something that people remember and take with them.

"The me of today is a little different from the me of yesterday."

(Launched 2026) PaperColor: Integrated IoT Prototyping Platform for Full-Color ePaper Applications

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 11:01:29 +0800

Innovation: PaperColor adopts a finished, ready-to-use form factor, integrating full-color ePaper display, wireless connectivity, voice interaction, environmental sensing, and low-power power management into a single development platform. This empowers enterprises and developers to rapidly develop product-grade ePaper innovations and creative applications.

Product Overview

PaperColor is a development board designed for full-color ePaper IoT innovation. It features a 4-inch E Ink Spectra 6 full-color ePaper display (400x600 resolution) as its core. The platform is powered by the ESP32-S3R8 dual-core MCU, equipped with 16MB Flash, 8MB PSRAM, and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi capabilities. Unlike traditional ePaper modules, which are primarily for screen driving, PaperColor integrates display, networking, voice, sensing, storage, power management, and human-machine interaction (HMI) into a thin, compact device, allowing developers to bridge the gap from concept validation to product-ready prototypes faster.

Full-color ePaper has long been recognized as a vital medium for bridging digital content and low-power physical environments. It offers a reflective display effect similar to paper, remaining clear even in bright sunlight, and requires almost no power for static images, making it ideal for applications that require long-term information display without frequent recharging. PaperColor utilizes the Spectra 6 full-color ink display because it can render not only text and icons but also color gradients, brand identity, artistic visuals, and more expressive information interfaces, shifting ePaper from "low-power monochrome labels" to "intelligent color terminals."

Innovation Context

In the ePaper industry, many innovative applications remain at the concept stage—not for a lack of imagination, but because of the high barriers to prototyping. Developers previously had to handle screen driving, MCU selection, wireless communication, battery management, sensor integration, audio acquisition, peripheral expansion, and firmware adaptation separately. Each step is time-consuming, hindering the rapid implementation of simple ideas. In the full-color ePaper field, balancing screen refresh, power consumption, color rendering, and interaction is particularly complex, placing higher demands on hardware integration.

PaperColor addresses this pain point by pre-integrating the most common, critical, and highly coupled capabilities required for ePaper development, allowing developers to bypass building base hardware from scratch. Whether creating smart photo frames, low-power environmental meters, desktop information signs, or exploring voice-interactive ePaper terminals, users can conduct rapid experiments on a single board. This lowers the entry barrier and allows more cross-disciplinary creators to contribute to the ePaper ecosystem.

Core Technical Solution

The core control unit of PaperColor is the ESP32-S3R8, featuring a dual-core Xtensa LX7 processor clocked up to 240MHz. With 16MB Flash and 8MB PSRAM, it provides the computational foundation for graphical user interfaces (GUI), network communication, local data caching, and multi-tasking. Wi-Fi capability enables connection to cloud content, LAN services, or data platforms. Combined with a microSD card slot, it allows for both online data retrieval and offline storage of images, configuration files, and logs.

For HMI, PaperColor integrates three programmable user buttons and one power button, complemented by two RGB LEDs and an IR transmitter for status indicators, remote control expansion, or scene linkage. Crucially, it features an integrated audio system based on the ES8311 audio codec, paired with an ES7210 audio ADC, a MEMS microphone with AEC (Acoustic Echo Cancellation), and a 1W speaker driven by an AW8737A amplifier. This configuration allows ePaper devices to move beyond buttons and screens, enabling voice pick-up, voice prompts, audio playback, and more natural human-machine feedback.

Regarding environmental sensing and reliability, the board carries an SHT40 temperature and humidity sensor and an RX8130CE Real-Time Clock (RTC), supporting environmental monitoring, scheduling, timed refreshes, and offline operation. Coupled with the M5PM1 multi-stage power management system, the device manages power for the screen, storage, expansion interfaces, and peripherals, ensuring stable operation in desktop, wall-mounted, shelf, and display scenarios.

Product Experience and Application Value

PaperColor’s value lies not just in its hardware specs, but in its ability to provide a complete "first prototype." Developers can quickly achieve basic interaction using the UiFlow2 graphical programming platform or delve deeper using the Arduino IDE, ESP-IDF, or PlatformIO. For educators, makers, industrial design teams, IoT solution providers, and ePaper enterprises, this multi-layered software access balances rapid onboarding with professional scalability.

In practical use, PaperColor has already enabled diverse creative applications. Some have configured it as a Home Assistant dashboard to display home environmental data, device status, schedules, and automation info; others use it as a desktop personal information panel to display low-frequency but important content. Full-color capability makes it easier to distinguish between different information levels while maintaining a paper-like visual experience.

In smart interaction, users are experimenting with connecting PaperColor to intelligent agents or LLM services (e.g., Hermes Agent, Claude), allowing the ePaper terminal to not only display information but also handle Q&A, summaries, reminders, and voice feedback. With its microphone, speaker, buttons, and Wi-Fi, PaperColor can serve as a low-power, non-intrusive smart desktop entry point, rather than a traditional high-brightness screen terminal.

In content consumption and creative scenarios, some users utilize PaperColor to read manga, display illustrations, or build desktop art installations. The soft imagery of the Spectra 6 full-color ePaper allows color content to exist in living spaces in a quieter, more paper-like way, without relying on high-brightness backlights. These DIY use cases demonstrate that PaperColor is not just for engineering validation, but also has the potential to inspire personal creation and lifestyle applications.

Significance of Innovation

PaperColor’s innovation lies in its systemic integration of capabilities—E Ink Spectra 6, ESP32-S3, Wi-Fi, voice interaction, sensing, local storage, IR expansion, RGB feedback, and multi-stage power management—into a single, compact development board. It is not a simple combination of modules, but a systematic integration of the capabilities required for full-color ePaper application validation.

Traditional development often requires developers to connect screens, MCUs, power, sensors, and audio modules manually, while handling software/hardware adaptation. PaperColor standardizes these capabilities, significantly shortening the prototyping cycle. Developers can focus on application scenarios, content design, interaction, and business models rather than hardware assembly and debugging.

The significance of this is clear: it provides a relatively open, user-friendly, and reproducible entry point for full-color ePaper applications. The ePaper industry’s growth relies not only on screen performance but also on tools that support application validation and ecosystem expansion. By transforming upstream display technology into a tangible, programmable, and demonstrable product base, PaperColor helps evolve ePaper from a single display component into a complete, intelligent terminal solution.

Future Outlook

As the boundaries of ePaper applications expand, future terminals will do more than just "display content"—they will take on more tasks related to sensing, connectivity, feedback, and interaction. PaperColor represents a shift toward giving full-color ePaper more "terminal-like" capabilities. It can serve as a rapid tool for solution providers to validate industry needs, an introductory platform for education and makers, and a sandbox for enterprises to incubate new products, services, and scenarios.

At the industry level, PaperColor acts as a bridge between upstream screen innovation, midstream module/system integration, and downstream application/content services, creating a more efficient innovation chain. The prototypes built on PaperColor may become the starting point for ePaper’s entry into new scenarios, making full-color ePaper easier for developers to utilize and test, and allowing more innovative applications to be verified in real-world environments.

Ultimately, PaperColor’s story is not just about a development board, but a reflection of the trend toward full-color, intelligent, and low-power interactive ePaper applications. Through its miniaturized, open, and integrated approach, it provides a practical prototyping foundation for enterprises and developers to explore the next generation of ePaper terminals.

Key Specifications Summary

Item	Configuration & Value
Display	4-inch E Ink Spectra 6 full-color ePaper, 400x600 resolution; ideal for low-power color information display.
MCU & Connectivity	ESP32-S3R8, 16MB Flash, 8MB PSRAM; supports 2.4GHz Wi-Fi.
Interaction	3 user buttons, RGB LEDs, IR transmitter, speaker & MEMS microphone; supports voice and multimodal feedback.
Sensing & Battery	SHT40 temp/humidity sensor, RX8130CE RTC, M5PM1 power management, 1250mAh Li-ion battery.

(Launched 2026)Color ePaper Wireless Microphone — Insta360 Mic Pro

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:34:19 +0800

On May 19, 2026, Insta360 launched its first flagship wireless microphone, the Mic Pro. This release is not just an upgrade in audio performance, but a redefinition of the "productivity tool." Its most striking innovation is the integration of a 1.22-inch color ePaper (e-ink) screen on the microphone body. While this is not the first time e-ink has appeared in consumer electronics, it marks the first time it has taken the stage on a wireless lavalier microphone as a "customizable, expressive" feature. Amidst a sea of identical audio devices, this tiny screen has become the Mic Pro's most prominent identifier, turning it into a small "canvas" for creators and a personal social business card.

Why E-Ink? A Technical Choice Driven by Creator Pain Points

For a long time, the design of mainstream wireless microphones has been uniform: a black body with a prominent brand logo. This hides a long-overlooked pain point—why should a creator’s video content be used as free advertising for microphone manufacturers?

A vlogger spends hours meticulously editing a video, yet a large logo from another brand hangs on their collar the whole time; a production company shoots a professional promo, but a microphone manufacturer’s badge is front and center. Of course, users have their own workarounds: using stickers, wrapping tape, or using external mic cables to hide the transmitter off-camera. However, these methods are neither aesthetically pleasing nor convenient.

Insta360 identified this pain point and proposed a bold solution: Why not let the microphone itself become a part of the visual expression? Since the microphone must appear on camera, why not dispense with traditional brand logo placement and turn it into a "canvas" that allows creators to display their own names, logos, channel identifiers, or any image they like?

The ideal solution to this problem is E-ink. Its physical properties naturally align with the usage scenarios of a microphone.

Prioritizing Battery Life: E-ink is a reflective display technology that requires no backlight and consumes almost no power when displaying static images. Even when the microphone is powered off, the pattern or logo remains clearly visible. The Mic Pro transmitter offers about 10 hours of battery life on its own, and up to 30 hours with the charging case—the "power-efficient" screen plays a major role in this.

Outdoor Performance: Outdoor shooting is a high-frequency use case for microphones, requiring the screen content to be captured clearly on camera, even in direct sunlight. E-ink uses reflective principles; the brighter the sunlight, the sharper the custom pattern appears. The Mic Pro screen is covered with an AG+AR coating to minimize reflections and increase light transmission, ensuring it remains clear in both indoor and outdoor settings.

Expanding Beyond Black and White: To truly make the microphone a part of visual expression, it cannot be limited to monochrome. The Mic Pro utilizes an industry-leading E6 six-color module, supporting six primary colors (black, white, red, yellow, blue, and green), and uses dithering algorithms to create rich color layers. Users can choose between "Natural" and "Vivid" modes, ensuring that everything from simple outlines to complex patterns is presented clearly.

From "Display" to "Expression": Creating Real Value for Creators

Insta360 has further unlocked the value of the E-ink screen, turning it into a core tool for enhancing creative efficiency and building personal style. Through the Insta360 App, creators can choose from official theme galleries or upload their own custom designs:

l Commercial Shoots: Display brand logos consistently to maintain visual identity, ending the need to "advertise for someone else."

l Self-Media Creators: Reinforce personal IP by displaying channel identifiers or the theme of the current episode during the shoot.

l Multi-Speaker Scenarios: Assign names or camera IDs to each microphone to easily distinguish between devices. This eliminates the "rough-and-ready" use of colored tape and significantly improves collaborative efficiency.

l Team Collaboration: Easily share settings via the "Personalized Wallpaper" page in the Insta360 App. By clicking the share button, users can generate a QR code or share code, allowing team members to synchronize screen settings instantly without manual configuration.

Beyond the Screen: Full-Dimension Hardware and Software Innovation

While the E-ink screen is the most eye-catching innovation, it is far from the only one. Insta360 has achieved several breakthroughs in audio architecture: Each transmitter features three built-in omnidirectional microphones, utilizing beamforming algorithms to provide four pickup modes (Omnidirectional, Super-directional, Cardioid, and Figure-8). Combined with the innovative "on-camera" mounting method, it flexibly handles various recording scenarios, even in complex environments.

At the chip level, the Mic Pro includes a dedicated NPU (Neural Processing Unit), significantly increasing processing power to more accurately identify and eliminate noise while preserving natural, realistic vocals. The audio system includes a "double safety net"—32-bit float internal recording captures an extremely wide dynamic range for post-production flexibility, while Automatic Gain Control (AGC) balances volume in real-time. Additionally, stereo internal recording allows a single microphone to capture spatial and directional audio, creating an immersive experience.

In multi-device collaboration, the Mic Pro excels: the "4-transmitter-to-1-receiver" mode supports four-channel independent output, perfect for multi-person podcasts or interviews. The "2-transmitter-to-4-receiver" mode can distribute audio from two transmitters to four different cameras simultaneously, solving synchronization issues in multi-cam setups or live streams. As a key part of the Insta360 imaging ecosystem, the Mic Pro can connect directly to most Insta360 cameras via Bluetooth, outputting 48kHz high-definition audio without a receiver, enabling a seamless "audio and video in one" experience.

In a highly competitive wireless microphone market, the Insta360 Mic Pro has carved out a unique position through the cross-over fusion of E-ink and audio technology, offering irreplaceable competitiveness for vlogging, commercial production, and multi-cam recording.

The significance of the Mic Pro is not just about placing an ePaper screen where it hasn't been before, but proving that when the physical properties of a mature technology perfectly match the needs of a specific scenario, it creates an unprecedented user experience. This "start with the end in mind" product philosophy—identifying the essence of user needs and working backward to find the most suitable technical solution—is becoming a new paradigm for consumer electronics innovation. The Mic Pro provides a valuable reference for the application of E-ink in audio devices, showing that a screen that "can express itself" allows microphones to evolve from "being heard" to "being seen.

(First Publish: 2025)Ledger Stax: The World's First Curved ePaper Touchscreen Hardware Wallet

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 22:03:42 +0800

### The Spark of Inspiration

Ledger Stax, featuring the world’s first curved E Ink® touchscreen, was born from a bold ambition to redefine both security and user experience in hardware wallets. Early Ledger products like the Nano series, while secure, felt akin to clunky USB drives—marred by cumbersome operations and rudimentary displays. After their 2018 launch, CEO Pascal Gauthier resolved to pivot: he brought on Ian Rogers, a former Apple executive, as Chief Experience Officer. Together, they envisioned merging E Ink’s strengths—crystal-clear, persistent visibility and ultra-low power consumption—with a naturally contoured curved touch design. The result? An intuitive, fluid user experience that transcended the "functional tool" label, transforming hardware wallets into user-centric devices.

### Breaking New Ground with Curved OTFT Displays

Ledger Stax stands out for its pioneering curved OTFT (Organic Thin-Film Transistor) display. By depositing E Ink layers onto a flexible plastic substrate instead of traditional glass, the team created a bendable, shatter-resistant screen with built-in touch capabilities. Compared to glass-based displays, OTFT manufacturing slashes process temperatures from 350°C to under 100°C, drastically reducing energy use. This breakthrough enables the screen to stay perpetually lit with minimal power—users can check their crypto balances directly on the device without connecting to another gadget.

### Three Core Design Principles

- **Form Innovation**: Credit-card sized (85mm x 54mm) with a magnetic "stackable" design (hence "Stax," from "stack"). It doubles as a personalized display for NFTs or photos.

- **Simplified Interaction**: Setup takes ≤3 minutes. The E Ink screen supports touch and constant visibility, letting users check balances offline.

- **Seamless Transactions, All on One Screen**:

- Verify details (recipient address, transfer amount)

- Biometric confirmation (via Bluetooth-linked mobile app for one-tap signing)

- Magnetic stacking: Multiple devices snap together magnetically, enabling unified management of multi-chain assets (supports 5,500+ tokens including BTC/ETH).

- **Emotional Connection**: The curved side, resembling a book’s spine, accepts custom labels, infusing the device with personality.

These features strip away the "tool-like" feel, turning Stax into a secure vault for crypto assets—one that’s energy-efficient, merges touch functionality with secure elements, and balances utility with aesthetics, making it a true consumer electronics standout.

### Redefining Hardware Wallets on Three Fronts

Ledger Stax isn’t just a response to user frustrations; it’s a bold push at the edges of technology. It reconstructs hardware wallets across dimensions:

- **Design**: Infusing consumer electronics logic into security hardware, giving cold private key management a human touch.

- **Technology**: The OTFT flexible screen marks a turning point—E Ink is no longer confined to flat displays but free to take diverse forms.

- **Philosophy**: Post-FTX collapse, market demand surged, underscoring a truth: as digital asset risks grow, physical-level security paired with user-friendly design becomes non-negotiable.

Stax’s journey—from "geek tool" to mass-market product—weaves together a revolution in design philosophy, breakthroughs in materials science, and the crypto world’s dual hunger for safety and simplicity. Its innovation isn’t just in hardware; it redefines what self-custody of digital assets *feels* like.

As the Ledger team once asked: "Will we be Web3’s Apple, or its Nokia?" With Stax, they’ve begun writing the answer: Security doesn’t require sacrificing usability. Innovation, at its best, serves trust.