• qupada@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I recently bought a Boox Palma, which is a phone-size Android device with a real E-Ink display.

    It’s not a phone (WiFi/Bluetooth only, no mobile radio), and with 4-bit greyscale it’s definitely an adjustment to use with a lot of apps (it has per-app DPI & contrast controls to help), but they’ve done a lot of work on the refresh rate to make it feel responsive.

    It even has midrange-phone specs (SD 6xx series CPU, 6GB RAM, 4Ah battery), with full Google Play, so it’s a quite usable Android device overall. Like most modern E-Ink devices, has a CCT warm-to-cool frontlight, so great for night-time use.

    Now would I want to use it as my only, everyday device (if it was a phone too)? Probably not. Could I? Almost certainly.

    Colour E-Ink is still quite limited (in contrast, and resolution), but I expect the patents on that are quite a bit newer and we won’t be seeing so much movement in that area so soon.

    • pgetsos@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I really wanted YotaPhone to succeed. Both a normal screen and a very very battery friendly e-ink for reading etc for hours…

    • Faceman🇦🇺
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      1 year ago

      I love my Boox Note 3. It’s am older device but still gets updates lots of tweaks for tuning the display on a per app basis, runs Google apps etc. I use it mainly as a reader for books and manga but also for drawing notes and browsing the Web.

    • toothpaste_sandwich@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Ooh, looks interesting. Though the size would be a disadvantage to me—I can imagine some situations where using an ereader is acceptable where a phone would not be, and other people won’t be able to tell them apart this way.

    • mlekar@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Honestly if the Palma would have cellular radio it would check all my phone need boxes.

    • afunkysongaday@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Colour eink is still very limited, but can’t they make eink (semi-)transparent? Just put eink above the usual LCD/oled and enable/disable them as needed?