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ElySiUM is a Crowd-Funded E-ink Screen For a Moto Z Smartphone

Only days after the demise of Popslate comes the news of a similar project for the Moto Z smartphone.

The ElySiUM is a crowd-funded E-ink smartphone case with a strange obsession with security:

Want to read an ebook or browse the internet on the go without carrying an additional ebook reader? Simply click the ElySiUM Mod to your Moto Z and you receive an all-in-one sleek device. Read ebooks, write mails, and even play games in high contrast with the low energy E-Ink technology. With our so called end-to-display encryption technology ElySiUM provides a malware proof terminal anytime you must ad hoc read confidential documents or identify yourself using two-factor authentication.

The ElySiUM 's developers are calling it "end to display" encryption, and that has this blogger scratching his head.

While E2D is a real thing, I don’t see why a smartphone owner would care about securing a secondary screen on their smartphone – surely they would encrypt their smartphone if security were that important.

And if security were important then wouldn’t they buy a secure phone rather than the Moto Z?

The Moto Z has a 5.5″ AMOLED screen and runs Android 6 Marshmallow on a quad-core Snapdragon 820 CPU with 4GB of RAM. With 13MP and 5MP cameras and a retail of $699, it’s not a bad smartphone, but it also isn’t secure, either.

As I said before, there’s a lot about this campaign which makes no sense.

In any case, the ElySiUM is further along than the Popslate was when we first met it. ElySiUM’s developers say that they already have the concept working on prototype hardware, and just need to finish the design and get it into production.

It is doubtful that they will pull that off, however.

The developers want to raise 300,000 euros in a fixed funding campaign. If they don’t raise the full amount they won’t get any of it, and with so little press coverage it is unlikely they will reach that goal.

Thanks, CyberGrimes, for the tip!

Indiegogo

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Comments


Name (Required) March 23, 2017 um 1:39 pm

175Eur for the Early Bird.
Plus the price of the phone.

In the meanwhile you can still buy YotaPhone 2 from some sellers. Not for $120 anymore, but still under 200Euro. About five days ago they still had a few for 130Eur at TinyDeal in the european warehouse.


Frank March 23, 2017 um 4:39 pm

This is dead on arrival, there isn’t enough interest to raise 300k euros for a mod that only works with one phone, the Moto Z. It is neat that this phone supports case mods called MotoMod.

It is interesting someone is trying something new, which is using an e-ink device for encryption but that would be a hard sell to a business.


SethD March 28, 2017 um 3:11 pm

RE: the Yotaphone–just try finding a Yotaphone 2 with bands that work anywhere outside of China though. The YD201 model with decent bands is way scarce, and if shipping from China probably a lie/error if it says it’s a 201. I’ve researched (and own one now).


Sebastian April 10, 2017 um 10:02 am

Hi,

i am Sebastian from the team from this campaign. Thanks for covering our product.

Regarding the security questions. The problem we see with smartphones is that they are inherently unsafe. We don’t have control over the OS and only slightly over the hardware. With E2DE we can at least provide a display displaying secured information, which can’t be eavesdropped by the OS or other parties. Further we can open a secured channel which allows secure 2 factor authentication, which is not possible on any smartphone just yet. It is often claimed, but two factor is not secure when the transmitter has full access to all the data. We split the transmitter from the secure data input in Elysium.

Of course it is not cheap, but we did our research and we have to say, E-Ink in this size is expensive. And as we mentioned, we need to fullfil lots of minimum quantities. Thats why we have this pricing. We would like to be cheaper of course. We are puzzled on some other devices claiming to build these Mods cheaper. But that is not our problem.

The need to have an MotoZ is of course a problem for this campaign, limiting the market to about 1 Million users. Hoping that the market will grow is another thing. But than again, the MotoZ has the unique possibility to really expand a phone. We liked this concept, still do.

We already work on follow up products, which do not need the MotoZ as a base. This will make production cheaper. Stay tuned for that.

If you have any more questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks again, and have a nice day.


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