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Has anyone used a e-ink smartphone as their main device
Looking up the Boox Palma device right now, it seems to be very handy actually. The only point where I may not be able to use it for everyday use would be that it seems to struggle with playing Spotify music. But I wouldn't mind picking up one of those 4G dumbphone devices that Nokia puts out for that usecase.
I understand the sentiment, but it’s not really “greed” is it? It’s a consequence of how the internet runs and is monetized, which is primarily based on ads. A professional website owner has strong incentives to serve ads that can’t easily be blocked. Their business depends on that model. As a user, you have the opposite incentive, to see content without ads.
Neither is really greedy perse, they’re just self interested. By and large, populations will do things that serve their self interests. If you swapped the leadership of google with any other people in the world, the result would be the same.
I agree with you though, the internet sucks to use nowadays, but I also don’t see any other way it could have turned out without fundamentally changing the way the internet, and our economic system works.
The problem in the first place was changing the way the internet worked. We could have chosen to make the internet function any way we pleased. The way it happened was to incentivize monetization instead of functionality. This served to make a lot of people a lot of money at the cost of a good Internet. Sounds like greed to me.
I agree. Running a website of any scale costs time and/or money. As a developer, the thought of having to host and maintain 2 versions of a site - one that heavily uses JS to provide the best experience for 99.5% of my users, and then separately having to maintain a second worse version that only 0.5% of my users would use just doesn't make sense. And at the end of the day, I want to be paid for my work, so monetization is required.
But why are ads then the main monetization method?
It is not like alternative methods are not possible. For example I would personally prefer borrowing my CPU time to the website, it is not like ads do not run whatever code they want anyway and properly sandboxed process that would not include stealing my attention would have been immensely preferable. I would even just pay them a multiple over what they would made on the ads they showed me if it was possible. Personally I am not subscribing to a site I might use once a month but that does not mean I would not give them reasonable amount of money if I actually could.
These methods are not viable because ads superseded everything, probably because they are scalable, allow websites to claim that they are free while possibly being the most expensive method available(pushing a lot of costs onto commons), allow incredible control over popular consensus and likely more I am not in a position to think of.
I am not sure how far down to attribute the greed. Likely not with the smaller individual website owners, but it is greed that made ads on internet ubiquitous.
Just want to say this is very much possible. I have an Onyx BOOX Note Air 2 Plus and read basically any website with Firefox and uBlock Origin. Overall the experience is great.
Yeah I suppose the keyboard situation isn’t amazing but I use it mostly as a consumption device. Once I’ve favorited the websites I visit frequently there isn’t much need for the keyboard.
The light phone had made the rounds a while ago, I kind of thought it was expensive for what it was offering but it may be of interest to you?
https://www.thelightphone.com/
EDIT: I have one of the Boox budget tablets, it's an awkward piece of kit in that I can run apps on an eink screen, but apps aren't really designed for an eink screen, plus the jank of using an off brand android tablet to begin with. It also requires a non revokable API key from the Google Play store if that's a non starter for you.
Micro-USB and terrible battery life (if you’re making phone calls or using mobile hotspot) made the Light phone a no go for me personally. I wish they would do a refresh, because micro-USB was a non-starter before the phone was even released.
I use the mobile hotspot for my laptop, and need it to be able to run that hotspot for 2-4 hours at a time. Having to plug it in during that time wouldn’t be terrible, but the fact that the battery life apparently sucks if you use the phone as a /gasp/ phone?
There are other reasons why switching to the Light phone would be tough, like lack of 2FA apps, but the above issues are what really stops me from trying it out.
I've been using a Light Phone II as my primary device for a few years now and it's been fine for me. I have no inherent dislike of charging via MicroUSB, and battery hasn't been a problem for me since I hardly use it (which is kind of the point of the phone). I get at most one or two calls a day and send/receive a handful of texts and that's it. I plug it in maybe every 2 days or so when it dips below 50% to top it off. It's a fine little device if your goal is to rid yourself of a smartphone habit/addiction. For 2FA I use Bitwarden which has a variety of non-phone ways to use it (desktop app, browser extension, self-hosted web interface) or a hardware Fido2 key for stuff that supports them--all more convenient than whipping out your phone every time anyway.
I justified the cost because prior to the LP2 I dabbled with various dumbphones and my problem with them is they usually try so hard pretending to be smartphones with their laughable web browsers, music players, garish wallpapers and ringtones, essentially a bunch of useless feature bloat that just makes me annoyed every time I have to navigate my way through the sludge to make a call or send a text. The LP2 is a nice, sleek, clean little rectangle with a phone app, a qwerty on-screen keyboard for texting, and that's it (plus some optional "tools" for directions, music, podcasts, and stuff like that which I've found mostly unusable and leave uninstalled). Very satisfying in comparison.
Glad it works for you! I can personally do without the 2FA, it just would be nice if it supported it.
The Light phone just doesn’t work for me because of the mixture of both Micro USB and the poor battery (when in use).
Micro-USB is a non-starter for me because I have USB-C for everything except for a few desktop accessories (like my mouse) that use good ol’ USB-A. Needing to get another charger (let alone micro USB which I really do personally hate) makes it that much more annoying because of the next point.
I use my current phone (a typical smartphone) mostly to text and make phone calls. Reading news or tildes, for example, are distractions that I regularly have. I do make calls regularly though. I also am regularly texting people. The fact that the phone apparently has less than 3 hours of battery life when on phone calls is legitimately a killer. I don’t need it to last days at a time, but the fact that a single phone call of mine (which regularly hit over 2 hours on a weekly basis) could wipe out 2/3 of its battery is bad.
The battery issue is made significantly worse because I wouldn’t be able to charge it just anywhere. I would need a micro USB charger. My car charger would need replaced, I would need another charger at my desk at home and one at work, and then the bedside charger.
If it was USB-C, I wouldn’t need to change the charger cables, so it’s not an issues. Or if it had better battery life to where I could guarantee a full day of usage, then I wouldn’t care about the cable at all, since I could leave one on my nightstand.
It’s the mixture of both things that causes me to not even bother.
Seems like it would be a fantastic device if it had a good (fast and efficient) processor and newer ports
Slightly off-topic, but it would be cool to see a modern version of the YotaPhone.
I think Hisense makes them. The a5 or something like that. One side is Eink and the other standard.
Looks like it's the A2 Pro that's the dual screen one. A5 is e-ink only.
Can't seem to find any online, which is weird.
I have a Boox Nova 3. I primarily use it as an e-reader and it's great at that. As far as general app usage goes it does work pretty well, most of the time.
Dark modes or anything with a similar color scheme really just don't work. In general most things are designed assuming a display that has more than a gradient between white/black. It does a really good job most of the time with making things presentable. The lower the contrast(?) of whatever your looking at the less you'll be able to make out any detail though.
I do think having something similar (or something like the Light phone moocow linked) is a neat idea. I'm sure you could get well over the 24/48 hours of battery life 'regular' smartphones get.
I almost got a lightphone, but cancelled my order when I thought more about how drastically the change would affect me.
While I want less screen time and to not be so reliant on a smartphone, I realized that it would likely not be sustainable. Also, input lag on texting would drive me bananas.
I really wanted to do something different to reduce screen time, I just can't figure out how to make it work in practice.
In terms of Boox devices there is Palma and a Poke 2, not sure what exact differences there are between those 2
In case you missed the detail, the Boox Palma isn't a smartphone. It has no support for SIM cards.
(It also doesn't have a headphone jack if that matters).
As an owner of a Palma, I wish it had sim support. Battery is excellent, reading is really nice, and the ability to setup 2FA apps is sweet. If I could make phone calls and tether other devices to a mobile through it, it would be perfect. Right now, it’s in an awkward place of being an amazing e-reader with network capabilities, and a really compact footprint.
It makes me hope that Boox is using the Palma as a test device to see if there’s market. At the same time, I know not to hold my breath.
God I wish I could justify the price of a Palma. It makes a ton of sense for me, since 80% of my time on my phone is reading of some form.
If it had a headphone jack, I would strongly consider buying a dumb phone for calls and text and using a Palma as my main device.
Ah I see, if the Palma had a SIM + headphone jack it would've been close in terms of dream phone. Headphone jack would've been nice just because I don't think it has a built-in speaker and just has a mic? Would be a hassle setting up bt headphones every time you had to pick up a call
Can the Palma handle 2FA apps?
I have 2FA apps working on my Palma without issue. The Palma has 2 speakers and a microphone, but I cannot comment on quality. It also has Bluetooth, so if you want to setup headphones/earbuds/headset, you can. Yet again, I cannot comment on the Bluetooth, speaker, or microphone quality. I can say that the camera quality is quite poor, and if I’m remembering properly, requires you to use a “document scanner” app since there’s no dedicated app for just “photos”.
It really feels like 80% of my dream “simple” phone. Less distractions, still capable, long battery. The issue for me will continue to be the lack of sim support. I guess you could get away with having a dumb phone to act as a wireless network tether, but that seems like it would defeat the goal of simplicity since you’d have to carry around and constantly mess with two devices.
Ah I see, would you know if the Palma can handle messaging apps like Whatsapp or Signal?
I remember ogling Hisense A7 (or rather A7CC) once, but nothing came out of it. Color e-ink. It's fairly outdated by now, though. Still, an interesting device.
I feel like e-ink displays would comeback again one day, wasn't it a big issue with patents or something which restricted them? Having a secondary e-ink monitor could still be a big thing in the future
Not sure about patents, but quite likely. Phones would cross a major viability threshold once 24+ fps e-ink becomes affordable, for one.
More competition is always good, Kindle Scribe/Remarkable/Boox/Supernote + all the Chinese companies operating, hopefully we get to see good innovations this decade
The problem, as I understand it, in e-readers, is that you aren't truly looking at competition as they all (or the vast majority of them?) use the same screens, so there's really only so much any individual company can do to innovate.