Huawei MatePad Paper – eInk Tablet | Hacker News Reader

Huawei MatePad Paper – eInk Tablet

consumer.huawei.com

287 pointsgadders315 comments

Remarkable 2 is better, because of the features it doesn't have.

The best feature of Remarkable 2 is how quiet it is, it doesn't do anything except for Book reading and note taking.

No notifications, no messaging, no email, quiet tech.

You can turn these all off. Lack of features is not a feature imho - no mather how hard people try to sell this.

Twitter exists because you can't write long posts. Snapchat exists because you can't view past messages. Tinder exists because you can't just talk to anyone unless they are interested in you too. Limitations and missing "features" absolutely can be an asset to a platform.

To a platform, sure. Limiting what other people can do can shape how a social platform works.

For a piece of hardware, not so much.

You're comparing apples to oranges - those are social networks where multiple people have to come to some sort of consensus, having rules over that consensus sure, can be a feature. I don't need anyone to agree with me to turn off notifications.

Devices with notifications are little skinner boxes for our brains. There's perfectly valid reasons for people to want a device where notifications are not even an option, just like there's valid reasons for alcoholics to not want booze in the house. If that's not an issue for you - congratulations, those devices are not designed for you. But please don't deny others them, just because you don't think they should exist - they absolutely should.

Nobody said the Remarkable shouldn't exist. The question was whether the lack of a feature that can be disabled is a feature, which it isn't. You know what else doesn't send notifications and doesn't even need a battery? Paper.

>The question was whether the lack of a feature that can be disabled is a feature, which it isn't.

It is, though, and examples have been provided of VERY successful platforms built upon this negative space.

Consider the lack of a feature as a feature itself; it lowers the amount of cognitive brainpower required to use the system, and that is VERY valuable.

I’m of two minds on this one. Starting without notifications as an option in my devices would help me tremendously in my day to day life. But that’s just me. There are so many different brains out there. How does a company make a product that sells to a sufficiently wide market to make it worthwhile? The only option I see is… options. User-specific customization.

> Starting without notifications as an option in my devices would help me tremendously in my day to day life.

Incredibly good for mental health.

> The only option I see is… options. User-specific customization.

You can SSH into a remarkable tablet and do whatever you want to it.

> How does a company make a product that sells to a sufficiently wide market to make it worthwhile?

It is very expensive. Its only purpose is to be a digital notebook.

I wasn’t referring to this product specifically, but electronics in general.

> You know what else doesn't send notifications and doesn't even need a battery? Paper.

Think of this product as very expensive paper that backs up writing to the internet. Not a sh*ty tablet that can't do a lot of things.

In my opinion it's a great deal more complex than: "you can just turn off the features". To me "lack-of-a-feature" is not in itself a feature of the device or platform, rather a feature of the company who makes the device or platform. It signals that the manufacturer is fully committed to solving a specific use case. Avoiding feature creep is tough though. Companies need to make money, and the easiest way to do that is to exploit your current customers to upgrade. However, because no one upgrades a device without a reason, it may be inevitable that companies continue to follow the classic: phone -> phablet -> tablet -> basically laptop without a keyboard progression.

>You can turn these all off.

In many cases, you can't. Turning off popups and reminders is a constant battle with my hardware. Duolingo is about to murder me if I don't resume my language practice.

No you're wrong. Its absolutely a selling point. When i got my remarkable i did what i do with any other tech, start searching the menus and features and trying things out. What i immediately discovered... theres nothing to do! Until you start writing, or you have something to read, the device is useless. I got mine for XMas, and a week earlier i bought myself an ipad pro to use as a digital notebook. Unboxing it and using it day one and i was immediately struct by the quiet tech that it is. Its unlike anything else i've used in a long time.

Get an ipad and theres endless apps and accounts and notifications and a shiny bright screen begging for you to play with it. The ipad really wants to be your computer with a stylus attached, and that is great, i take it traveling instead of anything else and its really convenient. The remarkable is NOT a computer. The remarkable sits at my desk and is just ready for me, while the ipad is eternally charging, or chiming, or begging for attention and distraction. I can't have it at my desk while i work.

The remarkable is literally a digital notebook and has about as much utility as a real notebook - a lot for writing and reading and almost 0 for anything else. It is honestly the first product i've used that actually replaces paper at my desk.

I have an old iPad Air that I don’t link to my main Apple ID. It has no apps except for the minimum needed to function as an ebook reader and scratchpad.

It’s pretty distraction free. I would say if you’re willing to run your tablet under its potential it’s possible to have a quiet device.

I ordered a Remarkable 2 but canceled once I realized I had an old iPad lying around. It works for me.

> It works for me.

Thats really what matters.

I will say one big thing for me is the light and flashing and stuff. Humans are naturally evolved to be attracted to quick moving and bright things. Bright electronic screens totally hit that, and for me any sort of screen in my periphery completely distracts me. So a device without a light makes a big difference.

Ive had LCD tablets and have a few Boox devices. The Boox devices are IMO not really a distraction. Web browsing just feels off and beyond grabbing something to read off the net I never really find myself using it. I don't compulsively browse reddit on it. Games and movies obviously are pretty much no goes but I get the added flexibility of being able to read the newspaper or a library book. You don't even need to make an account with the Boox devices. It's there if you want but it's MUCH easier to ignore than a smartphone or traditional tablet.

It must be great to live a life in perfect control of your impulses. Alas, as a mere human, being able to turn off all notifications, also means I can turn them back on when I get bored with what I'm doing.

Purposefully putting myself in a situation where any dopamine rush is more than a click away is one of the best feelings I've had in years. So yeah, I'd consider that a feature.

What 'loud' tech did you see on the linked page? Everything was about reading and writing.

Not gp, but the app store and matebook syncing in particular jump out to me as going beyond reading and writing. Not that I disagree with their inclusion necessarily (I'm sure they put in whatever made sense in their ecosystem), but it won't be for everyone.

I think he means it in a metaphorical sense. Anything that grabs attention is "LOUD" in this sense (just as is ALL CAPS writing).

> Remarkable 2 is better, because of the features it doesn't have.

Like syncing local notes using common cloud services?

Technically, the feature's there, but it's locked behind a $100 per year "service".

Rant aside, I have an iPad mini where I turned all notifications off. Just as good as if it didn't have those features when I don't care about them - but if I need them they're right there.

I have a Remarkable 2. I cannot describe how much I love the writing experience on it. I don't think any other standard tablet has ever come close to that.

I also feel like you for the paid Connect account, which I work around using open source tools that you're free to run on it. You can SSH as root easily and run whatever you want. I do it frequently for screen sharing.

I always find funny how people gush over the Remarkable especially the writing aspect.

I for one find the lack of progress astonishing. Because, you know, if you wanted great writing experience you could've used a CrossPad ... 25 years ago. You write on a notebook -- with a quality pen manufactured by Cross as the name suggests -- the CrossPad records it as vector strokes. Done. In 25 years the progress we got is there's a screen now but that's all. The device still can't do, say, offline OCR or indeed anything useful beyond what the CrossPad used to do.

I have contemplated a more fully-functional device, but I don't get the need for OCR - I can type way more accurately on my keyboard than I can write. By a lot. Anyway...

I've had other devices with pens, but never really used them. I got the Remarkable for my wife and it really compels me to use it, but not with any features, just the writing aspect. I can't tell you whether it's the texture, the screen or something else, but it just does. I admit the same could happen with other E Ink writing devices like the Onyx Max Lumi 2, but I don't have any of them to confirm.

> Like syncing local notes using common cloud services?

Technically this is present on the Remarkable if you're willing to fiddle with the device some. They give you root by default (and provide an ssh service if the device is connected over usb), and the community has implemented quite a few syncing options.

That said - I was also very bummed to see them introduce the paid service. I'd really like them to succeed by selling good & open hardware, not by moving towards a locked down device ties to SaaS.

On my android devices, squelching unwanted notifications feels like whack-a-mole. I haven't been tracking it exactly, but it feels like various updated apps keep inventing new categories of notifications to get around my previous de-selections.

Clarification: the above are apps for which I still want /useful/ notifications, so I can't disable all notifications for them out-right.

Apps should have a notification category if you dig into the menus. Allowing you to specify but I think its up to the app developer to have it tuned to allow it.

If that happens, it's probably by design and a good sign that you should find a better app.

Indeed, Connect feels bad. There's RCU http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

You can install syncthing on it. Problem solved.

Has PDF annotation improved on Remarkable 2?

Otherwise it's trival to disable notifications, messaging, email etc (at least on Boox and there are quite good youtube tutorials about how to do this), so that's not a particularly strong differentiation.

"You can have any color you want as long as it's black" only works as a selling point if other cars can't be black.

"You can have any color you want as long as it's black" isn't the selling point. The selling point is- "This car was designed to be black, and looks better in black than other cars."

It's like how my screwdriver is significantly better at driving screws than my swiss army knife. Purposeful design drives a better experience

In this case it doesn't. PDF is vastly superior on other devices.

I was skeptical because of the cost, but it's honestly been a hugely valuable investment for my work. I don't even turn wifi on and don't care about syncing.

All I want is something I enjoy using to write notes throughout the day, sketch out ideas, and organize my day.

Yes, there's a trillion other tools, software, apps, paper notebooks, whatever that I could use to do this. The point for me is that I didn't use those things. I do use the Remarkable and I love it.

Same. I use pretty much every feature of the remarkable 2. My favorite product in a decade

Does the Remarkable 2 have "templates" for pages?

A couple years ago I went from a largely "paperless" life to using a daily planner, largely for my daily work and personal TODO lists, and have found the process very valuable.

I toyed around with making a custom template for my daily notes/lists, and using the RocketBook ecosystem (maybe with just my own printed templates and using their app for scanning), but in the end just stuck with pre-printed planner books.

I'm just getting ready to order my third planner, and this topic comes up and tempts me with a technological solution to a largely solved problem, but makes me wonder what benefits it might have.

Out of curiousity, which planner do you use and which feature(s)/layouts are the most useful for you?

I've started building custom pdf planners for these eInk devices (I'm an rM2 owner myself) and am always looking for insight on how people use them. Have a little website setup for this at https://hyperpaper.me

My use is still evolving, but mostly I use it for daily "TODO" lists for both work and personal. Secondary I use it for notes about the day. Both are basically disposable, and my "what I did" I type into a notes file on the computer for future reference and searching. The planner I find quite valuable to let me flip to a page in the future and write down a "todo" to do in a few days or weeks.

The TODO lists I mark with Done, Won't Do, or Rescheduled for the future. That process is valuable, if I push something off too many times, I evaluate if I really need to do it.

I started with the Panda Planner Pro, but I ended up finding the personal and reflective things more onerous than useful. So once I filled up the first one I moved to the Amazon Basics Daily Planner ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078GVYRZG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... ), which I mostly like. I like having two days of todos at once, because I can just see more that way. I'd probably be just as happy to have 3-4 todo columns per 2 pages, 5 would be convenient but probably too small.

I'm considering the Clever Fox Pro for the next one, but it's $40 while it has a nice week view, it probably doesn't have enough todo entries, I really need a good 10-15 per day. Maybe I just need a week todo, with daily "priorities". That would probably be ideal.

I'd like to try the "timeslots" where I plan out my todo a bit more with times, but that may or may not work.

Yeah it does, pretty certain you upload custom ones too though I've never tried it

Yes you can, in fact you can ssh/scp into the device since it runs Linux and transfer over any .png files to use as templates. It's pretty neat and unusual to be able to do that on a consumer devices these days.

Check out https://remarkablewiki.com/tips/templates

No Kindle app = Not useful to me. Do either of these support kindle?

There is no kindle app directly. You can go through a conversion process to convert from .kfx to .epub and then read those on (at least) the remarkable.

https://www.isummersoft.com/transfer-kindle-to-remarkable-ta...

Boox devices run Android, so you can install the Kindle app from the play store.

> No notifications, no messaging, no email, quiet tech.

Also, no spyware..

thinking the same thing. how damaging to the brand that once I hear Huawei, I think of spyware.

Spyware and cheap knockoffs. Also rampant IP theft [0]. As they say, chabuduo! [1]

[0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

[1] https://mothership.sg/2018/05/what-is-chabuduo/

HN cannot seem to decide whether to hate or love IP protection.

are there concrete cases you're thinking about?

It's china. They have been caught putting chips in servers to infiltrate US companies.

It's everywhere. The CCP takes what the CCP wants. If you work for one of these companies like Huawei, or Boox or whatever, when the Chinese government asks you to do something nefarious, you comply because you want to keep existing. They ain't asking.

Caught putting chips in servers is as plausible as putting chips in masks.

After receiving this feedback, I went and reexamined this issue.

It was reported by multiple outlets, but never corroborated.

I sincerely apologize for perpetuating misinformation.

I should have looked at this issue harder when it happened, and again before posting about it.

You're probably referring to the Bloomberg chip hack 2018 article that had no primary source, that was doubled down on and still has no source.

If I had to choose between China and Big Tech spying on me (and I technically do) I would pick China any and every time honestly.

[flagged]

> HN has long been infiltrated by CCP-backed commenters

I suspect this is true to some degree but I also think there is no shortage of Chinese nationalists and anti-Americans (including Americans) who by default, upvote anything that has a pro-China agenda and downvote anything that has anti-China agenda.

> anti-Americans (including Americans)

Alas, tankies and campies exist.

People do not possess ideas, ideas possess people. There is no escaping the memeplexes driving these and our posts.

I don't live in China. The Chinese are many miles away. I am not worth nuking, and I am not at risk of being involved in a genocide.

I live in a surveillance state. I don't really like being surveilled. Big companies share data between each other, and it influences my ability to do things like obtaining a house, or getting insurance.

The Chinese have nothing to do with my data. Western companies, on the other hand, can make a good deal of profit from data in aggregate, and don't care if it harms other people.

The Chinese stick to their own people (and what they believe to be China). Western companies, on the other hand, will track everyone on the globe, without any consent at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI

I don't use Chinese software; it's just that the person's claim isn't nearly as insane as you're making it out to be. They're acting more rationally than you are, here. It's not Chinese scaremongering or anti-anti-Chinese scaremongering to acknowledge that China can't really do much to the average Western citizen in aggregate.

Short term thinking at its worse. China isn't going to stop at its borders. Their tech companies not only answer to their government, they are just as greedy western big tech, if not more. Your info is going to be sold to the highest bidder, plus shared with the Chinese government.

"You're thinking short-term and you're bad for it. Here's a bunch of unfounded speculation, and I'm going to throw in "plus shared with the government," despite your information already being shared with the United States government, which isn't at risk of collapsing any time soon, and will never be part of China, nullifying the risk of your data being taken by the Chinese government."

That's not the point I was making.

Why do you think the Chinese tech companies are any better than western ones with your data? They have the same pressures of producing profit.

The CCP has long been building a database on people in all countries of strategic interest (U.S., UK, Austrlia, India, etc etc). And not just the prominent people. All the people. [1][2][3][4][5]

But hey, tell us again how China is only interested in the Chinese.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/china-spent-years-coll...

[3] https://www.vice.com/en/article/xg89aj/china-has-been-doing-...

[4] https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/94493-china-has-st...

[5] https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/969532277/china-wants-your-da...

We've banned this account for two reasons:

(1) using HN primarily for political/ideological battle, which is not allowed here, regardless of what ideology or politics you like or dislike (see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...)

(2) routinely breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.

Those things are not what HN is for, and destroy what it is for.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Where is there genocide? Have you ever been to China, or do you just watch the propaganda of the media hostile to China?

Currently, Xinjiang. Past, Tibet.

> Have you ever been to China, or do you just watch the propaganda of the media hostile to China?

Have you ever been outside of China, or do you just watch media censored and approved by CCP?

I disagree with you but I don't think the downvotes you're getting are justified. If you really do prefer Chinese spying, why so?

I have no connection whatsoever with China, my data is pretty much useless to them. Big Tech companies can use my data in all sorts of ways to fuck me over. It really is a no brainer to me.

Are you saying there’s a setting somewhere where I can choose between spying by China and spying by Big Tech?

Cool, please point me to it.

If not, your comment makes no sense.

BTW, if such a setting were available, I’d choose spying by Big Tech any day over spying by CCP/China.

Else, I want neither.

I am saying people make that choice when they choose which device manufacturer they go with (for example buying a Google phone vs a Huawei phone).

Of all the larger nation states that could spy on me, I would probably be the least concerned about Indonesia. But China is not far above it.

When a product originates from China, it must be full of spyware. Let's don't even question whether that's true or even reasonable. Then imagine one day, China's scientists invented a new semiconductor, a new material to make chip, or a new technological product that's order of magnitude better than everything out there.

My question: are you going to avoid it like the plague; don't buy anything made of it, which may be in a lot of the things you touch. Btw, that's not very far-fetched, judging from the number of breakthrough research coming out of that country.

Is there an Overdrive app for the Remarkable 2? I want to be able to checkout and read library books.

Overdrive was bought by Rakuten, owners of Kobo. I'd predict that you're not going to see Overdrive apps on non-Kobo ereaders, unless they have access to Google Play.

Also eInk means that the display doesn't have a backlight, which means it doesn't catch your eye and steal your attention. +1 feature missing that makes it better.

Isn't what the Boox Max Lumi & Co have a "Backlight" ? https://shop.boox.com/products/maxlumi2

I found that this made a big usability improvement in low light situations over previous eInk readers I owned, and that in practice there were more low light situations (or at least situations where I'd rather not turn on a light just to read).

Footnote 20-22 indicates it has a backlight. Which is honestly something I want just because I want to be able to read in a dark or low light room. Something which has kept me from buying a remarkable.

for $400????

To be honest, I'd likely get one if I could read my work emails, check my calendar and keep myself up-to-date through my RSS feeds natively from it.

Remarkable is perhaps not clear enough that this isn't what they expect you to do with the Remarkable.

Perhaps it's not as remarkable as it claims to be.

Perhaps it’s exactly what it claims to be? I think I’ve heard, “remarkably simple” used as a compliment more often than “remarkably complex.”

Yep. I always think of spyware with Huawei now. However, I watched the clip that is partway down the page, and the song in that clip made me stop and listen. It is so relaxing to hear. Here is a direct link to the song in the video. [1]

If anyone can tell me the artist's name, I'd be grateful.

[1] https://consumer-img.huawei.com/content/dam/huawei-cbg-site/...

Edit: I found it through the lyrics. Olive Musique - Everything About You

Phenomenal news.

I’m hoping competition drives prices down. Remarkable 2 looks neat but so expensive. Now there’s choice.

Most of the expense on these e-ink tablets comes from the huge cost of that screen, so unless Huawei is willing to subsidize this product and monetize your private data instead, I doubt this will be significantly cheaper than the competition.

Regardless of price though, I'm not willing to out my private data on Huawei devices.

Are there no other companies apart from e-ink?

There is no "other company".

E-ink owns the parents, the fabs and the secret sauce to profitably producing quality e-ink film in good yelds.

Even without the parents, building fabs and the film profitably without their secret sauce would be impossible.

It's kind of like the early days of OLED when Samsung was the only one who could fab the tech profitably.

There are other companies now. Plastic Logic and OED are two I know of.

I checked them out and as far as I could tell, both are making displays based on E-ink's film. E-ink is also a major shareholder of Plastic Logic.

As I was saying, E-ink is the only game in town making the film. All the others are making displays based on it.

> both are making displays based on E-ink's film

Jesus H Christ. Sigh... Just have a google again on OED and at least read the first page of their website properly. It is clear to me the level of confidence in your claims corresponds inversely with the level of accuracy of the facts.

You really have no idea what you're talking about. Please read E-ink's website before spreading more disinformation.

You claimed OED buys E-Ink films. Please prove that with some evidence.

Go ahead and google your heart out. You don't work in the display industry which is why you don't know the well known fact that OED is a competitor of E-Ink. They both produce electrophoretic films.

What you said is literally the equivalent of saying Coca Cola buys its secret syrup from Pepsi.

It is so ridiculous. And yet HN is filled with your level of comments on electrophoretics.

> E-ink owns the parents, the fabs and the secret sauce to profitably producing quality e-ink film in good yelds.

fabs? Jesus H Christ. Based on just that one sentence, I can guarantee you have 0 experience and 0 direct knowledge of the display industry. Your statement is the equivalent to saying "Microsoft owns the parents (sp), the fabs and the secret sauce to profitably producing quality operating systems in good yelds (sp).

Would be nice if you also had an argument with your statement and not just mockery, to prove me wrong.

> Would be nice if you also had an argument with your statement and not just mockery, to prove me wrong.

So you make a massive unsubstantiated claim and I have to prove you wrong? I see the way your logic works.

Lets see.

You've made the claim that "E-ink owns the parents, the fabs and the secret sauce to profitably producing quality e-ink film in good yelds.".

So let me ask a simple question. Since you say E-ink owns all the fabs, can you show me the location of even one E-ink fab?

Here's a hint for the answer. E-Ink is a fabless company. That may confuse you so lets make it clearer. It means they don't have ANY fabs. In fact, I don't even know of even one electrophoretic material producer who has a fab.

Would you like to try again and provide a more accurate statement that reflects your level of ACTUAL knowledge of the display industry?

Mate, you're going completely off the rails and I'm not sure if you're actively trolling or are misinformed and in denial.

E-ink is a manufacturer of the E-ink pigment particles and the EPD film that's then sold to various display manufacturers where it gets sandwiched between glass, an ITO top electrode and a TFT bottom layer connected to a CoG (chip on glass), basically like any other LCD TFT display but instead of liquid crystal you have the famous patented E-ink pigment.

Those EPD display manufacturers all depend on buying the e-ink film manufactured by E-ink, at their fab in ... drum-roll ... Taiwan (big surprise). None of these EPD display company could make displays by themselves without the film they buy from E-ink.

Just read their website [1] and article [2] before spewing more nonsense

[1] "E Ink manufacturers a number of EPD films, with different attributes depending on application needs"

[1] https://www.eink.com/e-ink-film.html

[2] " As part of E Ink’s manufacturing process, microcapsules of ink coat plastic film. The film is then dried, inspected, rerolled, and sent on for further processing."

[2] https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-e-ink-developed-full-color-epa...

"Those EPD display manufacturers all depend on buying the e-ink film manufactured by E-ink, at their fab in ."

You think a film is manufactured at a fab? Do you even know what a fab is? Did you think a fab was like a manufacturing plant with vats of liquids? Jesus H Christ.

Not really. I'm pretty sure e-ink tech is still patented. There are some similar options like DES used in the maybe vaporware Reinkstone.

not to sound cynical but you are willing to draw the line with an american company, say google but not an openly chinese company like huawei. cool.

what about all the chinese people then? why would they want to use a google device over a huawei device?

shouldnt the discussion be about no company being able to harvest data in the first place, then we wouldnt be having this discussion about nationalities of the overlords

You're making a lot of claims about me and about Chinese people, which are not true, based on stuff you made up.

made up what? i am not in the US or china and i already know xiaomi and google is harvesting data and selling ads as a form of extra revenue and they even make that as a selling point (ads help us subsidize cost of product) and other non-sense.

does it matter that now huawei is doing the same? if i, as a user is having no issues with xiaomi or google or facebook harvesting and selling data to the highest bidder, how is huawei any "more" wrong or bad?

For context, I own a Huawei Matebook D and multiple "smart" devices by Apple and Samsung.

I'm hesitant to buy a Huawei device because of issues with support and build quality. My Matebook D is down at the moment due to an issue with the USB-C port, which also supplies power. I've owned many devices at this point that use USB-C, and the Huawei is the only one that has ever failed for this reason. To be fair I can't 100% lay the blame on "poor build quality", as my kids were the primary users and my youngest is hell on cables.

What I can say is that getting parts or support for it seems basically impossible. Understanding that that's because of the US government doesn't make it better. I'm hoping I'll be able to reflow the jack on the motherboard and get it to work again, but if not, I'll end up having to source a pulled motherboard from eBay - there's no other way for me to get parts, and as far as I can tell, no way for me to send it to the manufacturer for repair, even on my dime.

Between Apple, Samsung, and Google...

My experience with Samsung devices tells me that longevity isn't their strong suit. I'll never buy another Samsung TV again, and am very unlikely to buy another Samsung appliance. I might be willing to buy a phone or laptop, but only if there is adequate insurance or a service plan included in the price.

I don't trust Google. I try to keep as much of my data out of their hands as possible. I know that's a losing proposition - both because it may actually be impossible and because I'm not willing or able to completely cut Google services out of my life. I _really_ don't want an Android device if I can help it.

I don't exactly trust Apple, either, but at least it seems like they have a slightly more conservative corporate policy when it comes to sharing the data they've collected on my identity and usage. They're known to push back against "mass" warrants, and I've not seen anything that would lead me to believe that they have or plan to sell those data to a third party. They collect it, archive it, and use it for their own purposes, though. I wouldn't call that "good", but it's better than the alternatives.

Supernote seems to be a popular alternative.

I didn't knew that one, thanks!

Someone else has mentioned the Boox Note Air.

I'm kind of hoping Amazon create one, and use ebook sales to subsidise the hardware cost.

Kobo has a 10.3" reader, it's a bit cheaper than competitors but it's also not as good.

Amazon doesn't really seem to subsidize ereader hardware except maybe in countries where they are "losing" like Canada. Like compare what you get with a Boox Leaf or Boyue P78 for the price of a Kindle Oasis.

My kindle is “ad supported” which I always took as they subsidized it. That being said at least a year ago you can hack it and install ko reader and set the ad directory to read only and you got yourself a darn good Ereader with no ads.

It is or at least was cheaper to buy a Kindle Paperwhite in Canada with no ads than one in the U.S with ads. Even after taxes and conversion. It's really really unusual for an electronic product to be cheaper in Canada than the U.S.

Usually a comparable Kobo or Pocketbook is within spitting distance if not cheaper. The 6.8" Paperwhite somewhat upset the balance as they don't have a direct response to it right now. A Kobo Libra 2 is 90% of what an Oasis is for 2/3rds the cost. And no ads.

Soon: https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/

Also I want to recommend this one: Onyx Boox Nova3 Not so wallet gardened, and with a modern Android (so you could use google maps, openstreet maps or whatever among many other things)

> Soon: https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/

Eagerly waiting for it to become stable enough, and possibly the announcement of a bigger screen version. I'm not a mole, although I wear glasses, but books with diagrams and schematics need bigger screens not to be forced to zoom back and forth. I would also like a cheaper and bigger reader-only version, that is with no hardware/software to take notes, reduced eMMC storage in favor of external uSD cards, and good network integration supporting both NFS and CIFS. It would be nice for users who either bring their books on a uSD card, or would use the reader in a lab where most documentation files are already shared via local WiFi network.

I’d be keen, except I have no time to tinker. As far as I can tell, PinePhones are still very much DIY, might work etc.

As soon as that is able to reliably show PDFs and ePUBs with decent battery life, I'll probably get one. My phone is too small for some reading content, and the remarkable tablets lack a frontlight.

I hadn't see this. I've got a Boox Nova3, and though I like it in theory, the UX isn't great. That's the reason I'd consider the Huawei.

But also, how long until Amazon makes a kindle that lets me take notes both in the book I'm reading, but also as just a blank notebook....please please...

There's already been choice in the 10.3" eInk note pad segment, Kobo Elipsa, Fujitsu Quaderno, Boox Note and Note Air, Likebook P10W, Supernote A5X, etc. It's just such a niche thing combined with most of the devices being Asian focused and remarkable heavy online marketing that makes them seem like the only option.

They are still relatively expensive in relation to kindles. I really hope the prices get below $200 one day.

Whatever Amazon sells you, you're probably paying for it indirectly some other way.

I agree. This is a poor comparison.

A product that's subsidized will always win the price war with one that's not

Well, the difference between Kindle Paperwhite and Oasis is just one inch - but you need to pay twice as much. You could say only the former is subsidized - but wouldn't it be in Amazon's best interest to make reading experience more comfortable?

Its in Amazon's best interest to offer either convenience or lower price, which is what they do at the cost of treating labor poorly and harvesting usage data.

It's comfort and convenience subsidized through suffering

> Its in Amazon's best interest to offer either convenience or lower price, which is what they do

Not necessary. AFAIK, it is very often the case they just force vendors to not offer lower prices elsewhere, or else face non-promotion on Amazon, reducing sales significantly.

The Kobo Sage is slightly cheaper (in the US) for a comparable product. Still over $200, but not a lot if you get a Sage on sale and buy via Rakuten for an additional rebate.

I've had a Kindle Oasis (the non-ad-supported version) for a couple years. A couple months ago I got a Kobo Sage.

Same in both Oasis and Sage: - Screen quality - Battery life (in my experience; this doesn't match the actual specs of the products though) - "Waterproof"

Differences: Favoring Kobo Sage: - Screen is a bit bigger without a significant penalty in size and weight - Compatible with a pen and has built-in drawing/OCR/note-taking capabilities - Really easy to borrow eBooks from library via OverDrive - Easier to side-load and sync free eBooks - Slightly cheaper (US)

Favoring Kindle Oasis: - Slightly lighter weight and more compact - More responsive buttons (touch screen is same responsiveness) - Amazon's book purchasing and browsing features are a bit easier to use - Amazon selection is better - "Family" sharing - Built-in free cellular wireless data for Amazon downloads and browsing

I'm happy owning both devices. If I had to choose one or the other, then:

eReader only: I'd choose Kobo only because library borrowing is so much easier. If my local library didn't have OverDrive, then I would choose the Kindle + Amazon Unlimited in a heartbeat.

eInk tablet: Kobo, no question. The Kindle is an eReader. Amazon hasn't made any effort to make it anything more. It simply doesn't make sense to me to compare any eInk Kindle to the Kobo, MatePad, ReMarkable, Boox, etc.

My partner likes eInk tablets for note taking and diagramming, not for e-reading. He has both a ReMarkable 2 and a Boox. The ReMarkable is fine, but He much prefers the Boox because it's easier to use without a subscription. But, now that my partner has used my Kobo Sage, he is unsure whether he'd buy a Boox over a Sage. He says it's a very close call and it would probably come down to price.

>Remarkable 2 looks neat but so expensive. Now there’s choice.

R2 is $399, judging from the EUR retail price of €499 inc. VAT this will likely retail at $499 in US.

It is not cheaper than R2.

The prices reMarkable advertise are deceptive to the point where I reckon they’re probably illegal under at least Australian advertising law: that price doesn’t include a marker, which is almost essential to the deliberately expressed purpose of the device; so add on another 20%. Most people will also want some kind of cover, which is another 20% for the cheapest reMarkable sells.

You’ve got to be careful about this when comparing prices of different products, because they include different things. It sounds like Huawei’s will include a stylus and cover for that price, which does make it a little cheaper than reMarkable’s equivalent bundle.

Also, if you want basic features like cloud sync and handwriting conversion, you have to sign up for the $8/mo subscription.

Which is why hell will freeze over before I purchase a reMarkable.

Incidentally, the free plan offers something called "50-day sync", which is described like this:

"Without a subscription, you can still use the cloud to store and sync your notes. However, files will stop syncing to the mobile and desktop apps if they haven’t been opened in the last 50 days. They’ll still be automatically stored on your paper tablet."

Just to be clear: This is a feature designed for the marketing department, not for users.

The marketing people get to say that "we offer free cloud sync", while reducing users' trust in the cloud sync significantly enough that they feel obliged to sign up for the paid subscription.

It's infuriating.

> if you want basic features like cloud sync and handwriting conversion, you have to sign up for the $8/mo subscription.

You don't "have to" for cloud sync. Remarkable is a fairly open platform and there is a vibrant open source community surrounding it.

You can use a tool like the Remote Connection Utility [0], with support for $12pa. "RCU ensures the user's data is never out of their control, completely unshackled from the manufacturer's proprietary cloud.". There are other tools.

I can't speak to handwriting conversion as I don't use it, but I suspect they don't have any secret sauce and that any 3rd party recognition app can deal with the content if provided in a standard format. I sure wouldn't be wanting boox or Huawei clouds to scan my raw text.

[0] http://www.davisr.me/projects/rcu/

Cloud sync is also available by default without a subscription, just limited to files that were modified in the past 60 days.

Read my above viewpoints as a UX professional about the 50 day sync "feature".

I wouldn’t describe reMarkable as a fairly open platform. The one thing they got right was granting SSH root access as a way of complying with GPL and similar licenses, but that’s honestly the extent of its openness from their side, and they’ve rebuffed any appeals from the community that supported them so strongly early on to be in any way more open. Their software is all closed source, and designed in a self-contained way that is fairly robustly non-extensible. Their on-device rendering is superb, but their off-device rendering (used in their desktop software, for example) is mediocre for most writing and outright bad for anything resembling art. (This was the case last time I tried, over a year ago, and I get the impression that it’s still the case—they do something like turning their variable-width strokes into filled paths, then unioning them (to flatten self-intersection) and doing aggressive path simplification. I’m perplexed that they do it this way since it produces an obviously bad rendering on self-intersecting paths, which occur a lot in writing: path simplification needs to be done before unioning, not after.)

Sure, quite a few other people have written software for it or peripheral to it, but it’s all based on reverse engineering, since you’ve got things like xochitl (the UI software that runs on the tablet) being written in Qt with QML so that you can get a certain degree of binary patching (see ddvk-hacks, which customises the UI a fair bit), and their file formats are all sufficiently simple where it matters (some JSON, some plain text, and the stroke data being a painfully unoptimised binary-packed data scheme) that people can approximate most of it pretty well. But I’ve been feeling a growing sense of dissatisfaction in the community on the openness side of things. Many people chose to go with reMarkable because of this ostensible openness and the idea that things would improve, but at least some of it is a mirage, and attempts at extending on-device functionality are decidedly for power-users only who are willing to tolerate various inconveniences.

RCU is… eh. Tolerable. A good bit of work, but weaker than something first-party, mostly because of how it’s built on reverse-engineering and fitting around the whims of the reMarkable team, and how their software is architected. Its syncing is mildly fragile, and I’ve steadily become convinced that its entire approach of doing per-document tarballs containing the files pertaining to that document, rather than just mirroring the device’s ~/.local/share/remarkable/xochitl (which is flat) was misguided, a mistake as a primary approach (use something like that for interchange, sure, but for the typical task of syncing it’s very not good). Its rendering is the best I’ve found among open-source renderers, but it’s still very inaccurate for anything even vaguely arty. I’ve written my own SVG rendering pipeline (which currently means no textures or variable opacities, but only variable stroke widths—and on the point of variable stroke widths I’ve done better than any before me by a considerable margin) that I haven’t yet released, but thinking things through I’ve decided I’m actually not interested in continuing to work in and around a closed tool, so I don’t think I’ll bother going on to a more pixel-perfect bitmap renderer as I had originally planned; I’m more interested in the potential of starting from scratch in a proper open software ecosystem where you can actually add useful functionality to the software, rather than just eating the crumbs that drop from the master’s table. In the mean time, `rsync --archive --verbose --compress --delete $REMARKABLE_HOST:.local/share/remarkable/xochitl/ ~/reMarkable/data/` is excellent for sync.

I look forward to the PineNote getting further. A little way down the line, I’ll be seriously considering getting one and creating good long-form writing and drawing software optimised for it.

> Also, if you want basic features like cloud sync and handwriting conversion, you have to sign up for the $8/mo subscription.

> Which is why hell will freeze over before I purchase a reMarkable.

Maker of capital intensive hardware seeks revenue streams to bolster development and hire more engineers.

Chinese MANGA equivalent enters the chat with their own hardware financed from other business units and potentially subsidized.

This is why we can't have nice things.

We complain until the giants eat the market. Wait until you see the lock in they have in store. You won't be able to run arbitrary executables or hack on their devices like you can the reMarkable.

Pay more for products from small companies.

It's an electronic notepad. I'm not paying a monthly subscription for what should be basic features and can be performed on-device. Sorry.

Enterprise features like integration with enterprise software, SSO, MFA etc? Totally different, and happy to pay.

RM2 is extremely useful without any subscription.

> Maker of capital intensive hardware seeks revenue streams to bolster development and hire more engineers.

If China wasn't in this conversation, the above would be criticized as an example of greedy MBAs nickel and diming the consumer.

The capability to do file sync for free has existed on computing devices for ages, yet somehow this is an area where rent-seeking is acceptable? At least Chinese vendors like Onyx use Android under the hood, so setting up Nextcloud, Dropbox or Syncthing Fork can be done in a matter of minutes, without any ridiculous subscription fees.

>> Chinese MANGA equivalent enters the chat with their own hardware financed from other business units and potentially subsidized.

> If China wasn't in this conversation [...]

Substitute "China" for "Amazon" and my point still stands.

> [...], the above would be criticized as an example of greedy MBAs nickel and diming the consumer.

That's exactly my point though. We're too critical of small businesses with expensive products. It's unsustainable and unrewarding for small biz to innovate in hardware or expensive ventures that can easily be cloned and ripped off by big businesses that have fantastically mature revenue streams at scale.

I'll take my point further. Consumer behavior won't change and there is no solution in trying to shore up customer empathy. Instead, top down policy is the solution. Patents need to be given asymmetric teeth in order to fend off the bloodthirsty giants. That way we continue to allocate capital to innovation rather than the act of subsidized carbon copying.

A recent success case is Sonos in their patent litigation against Google's blatant copying of their multi-room audio product.

(Granted, we also need to tamp down on no-product patent trolling. Those people are nothing more than fancy thieves wearing suits.)

You can use any standard resistive stylus pen though, which you can get for extremely cheap anywhere (and you need to anyway, since the tips will wear down). The only thing their accessory pen adds is a built-in eraser.

The Remarkable tablet uses a Wacom EMR stylus - I picket up a Remarkable 1 from a recycling container and it worked fine with my Samsung Note 8 (or so?) stylus, at least for pressure. Similarly, the Remarkable stylus works with the Samsung Galaxy S21 and S22 Ultra models.

Wacom clone styluses are a bit more expensive than resistive styluses, but they can be bought for less than 20$.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I was told by a friend that he just used cheap brand stylus tips for his Remarkable tablet, I may have misremembered that as resistive styluses

It all comes down to the paper like writing feel + latency. Several contenders have been compared to RM2, but RM2 has consistently won out. Curious how this one does.

The A5X from Supernote is now to the point that I personally have the feeling it writes as fast as paper[0].

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Supernote/comments/rkw00t/a5x_chauv...

I've been using a Onyx Boox Note 3 for a couple years now (I previously had a Remarkable 1 but it didn't stick for me) - it has Android 10 (w/ Google Play support) and even an SDK for responsive writing for 3rd party apps. It's been great for taking notes, and adequate for reading books and papers (although even a single color for highlighting would be a huge improvement).

Note, that Onyx is notorious for violating the GPL (it doesn't release kernel sources), while reMarkable is not only compliant, but much more hacker friendly in general: https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

But there are also other companies/products Boyue Likebook, Ratta Supernote, Quirklogic Papyr, Fujitsu Quaderno that compete in the e-ink notepad space as well. I'm keeping an eye on the Bigme Carve Color personally, which basically has all the hardware specs you'd want and color (Kaleido 2) to boot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ydo5FtSt_qQ

For those looking at color, it might be worth waiting a few months to see if 1) if the Reinkstone R1 is actually vaporware or not (it has an alternative DES that looks like it provides better looking color, but is being developed by a questionable Chinese company that's been best by delays) and if eInk's Kaleido 3 is a significant improvement.

For those interested in the relatively niche world of e-ink devices, I highly recommend MyDeepGuide as a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/c/MyDeepGuide/videos

Which one has the best DPI?

Sony

Almost all of them use the same E Ink displays and have the same resolution/density. The newest ones use the Carta 1200 panel which improves response/updates, not resolution. Here's a reasonable chart of pixel density: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Comparison_of_E_Ink_disp...

Choice is good! But while ofc YMMV, IME the ReMarkable2 is priced very reasonably; it immediately became part of my daily workflow and has had big ROI for me.

RRP €499 (around $558) according to https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/28/22954498/huawei-matepad-p...

Hm, is that really a competitive price these days? That's more than 130 Euros more than an entry-level iPad... which has a long and good track record.

It's not the same thing. I think the target use cases are different. The e-ink and pen input combination is really trying to create a paper-like experience (which's great for reading and taking notes).

On the other hand iPad is more general-purpose powerhouse for pretty much anything, but if I'm between this and iPad for reading some books I'd prefer this. And I use/love an iPad Pro+Apple Pencil. Still would consider this for my long book/blog/paper reads.

The Matepad seems expensive though is comparable to other large eInk readers, but the iPad certainly doesn't have a track record as a dedicated (eInk) e-reader. Two very different things here.

Similar price and specs to the PineNote.

The iPad probably moves a lot more units though due to more general appeal. There are economies of scale that e-ink devices don't currently benefit from.

Also if you try buy an e-ink screen as a part for a project you'll see a difference in price, which will no doubt be a factor too (though the difference you or I pay for a single unit might not be entire indicative of what is paid for bulk/regular orders by manufacturers).

iPads are not e-ink devices

which make them worse in almost every way to do the things an e-ink device is built for.

As a software developer, I'm doing all I can to reduce my "screen time". I have a Barnes & Noble Nook and I've noticed that reading on the E-Ink nook is not screen time in the sense that it does not negatively affect my eye comfort. After looking at two 24" LCD monitors all day, with breaks to look at a 6" LCD telephone screen, the eyes do not want any more flashlights pointed at them. But the Nook (and other E-Ink devices) is not a flashlight and does not cause eye strain so far as I can tell.

... and probably £499 in UK which translates to $670. Does it worth it?

So it is far more expensive than the similar bookeen notéa and kobo elipsa which cost 400€.

I don't believe the material cost is even $50. It is niche and not as demanded as tablets. It is such a shame these things are not mainstream because of the price.

eInk displays aren’t cheap, then add in the pencil layer, cpu, etc

Yes, but it is not $500 expensive. LCD wasn't cheap but got 10 times cheaper in 15 years. eInk is around more than that yet still super expensive.

LCDs have massive scales of economy and endless investment into making their manufacturing cheap. I’d be surprised if eInk screens are even 1% of the quantity of LED/OLED/LCD screens out there. eInk may also be fundamentally harder to manufacture due do how it works (I’m not sure).

You also seem to be making the mistake that products should be priced according to their raw manufacturing costs. Not only is that ignoring engineering, marketing, legal, licensing and other costs, it’s also ignoring profit and trying to recoup investment on an initial product which itself is risky without knowing how well it will sell.

> I’d be surprised if eInk screens are even 1% of the quantity of LED/OLED/LCD screens out there. eInk may also be fundamentally harder to manufacture due do how it works (I’m not sure).

You are correct. 2021 alone would have sold well over a billion smartphones each with a display, OLED or LCD.

2021 was a banner year for ebook readers and yet I'd doubt they even reached 10 million units worldwide.

Electrophoretics just doesn't get investment because plainly speaking, the physics limits what it can do, and so nobody wants to invest big money into it. You'll see startups come and go, picking up maybe a 100 mil here and there and then burning out. That's even true across other display tech. Liquavista died. Qualcomm mirasol died.

You want improvement, somebody has to risk big money.

As an alternative, I am extremely satisfied with the A5X from Ratta Supernote. The latency when writing is as good as the RM2.

[0]: https://supernote.com/

Looks nice. Is there a way to use your own sync instead of theirs?

I am using it totally offline, I just plug it with the USB cable in my laptop (running Linux) and have a full access on the content to sync as I wish and need.

I haven't used their cloud offering.

They support Dropbox syncing and they're working on Google drive support at the moment.

They've also stated multiple times that they're working on getting a public developer api, I think it's on their current road map found on reddit.

You're satisfied with a device that is accepting pre-orders and hasn't shipped yet?

It is my daily driver, I bought and received my A5X early October 2021. I am surprised with your question.

Interesting, thanks.

The "pre-order" label is mostly due to supply chain delays. Currently there is a ~month lead time. I ordered mine back in late January and it is arriving this week.

Do yourself a favor and order a stylus with a dedicated eraser button while you're waiting, I personally can't stand having to click up top to change to erasing mode and then go back to where I was to erase stuff, and their touch gesture activated erasing is kind of janky and inconsistent. Other than that though I'm pretty satisfied with it.

> their touch gesture activated erasing is kind of janky and inconsistent

Could you expand upon what you mean by janky? My supernote is arriving soon and in my hours I spent reading and watching reviews the gesture erasing was consistently praised.

If you’re using an A6X at an angle, like resting it on an arm of a couch, the gesture fails more than it works.

It also fails if part of your other hand brushes the screen.

It just doesn't consistently work and I end up with several circles drawn around what I'm trying to erase that I end up having to erase as well. There's apparently some magic angle/distance to hold your fingers apart at and if you deviate even a small amount it doesn't pick it up. Having any part of your other hand/other fingers on the screen as well will cause it to not work either. Someone on the subreddit told me that what has been working for them is to hold their 2 fingers vertical along the left side of the screen and that's been working for me better than what I was doing, but it still often doesn't pick it up. I just today finally got my Lany EMR stylus in and am enjoying the dedicated erase button much more.

You may be looking at reviews for the linux version maybe? The gesture erase has only been on the android version since the latest update and most everyone I've spoken to in the supernote subreddit about it agrees it's not super great at the moment.

Other than that issue I'm a big fan, let me know if you have any other questions, happy to share my experience.

edit - one suggestion, the battery lasts much longer with wifi off, so I would suggest leaving it off and turning it on briefly whenever you want to sync notes, if you even care to do that, and check for updates every once in a while.

It's been released for quite awhile, they were just having supply issues so they're backordered a bit. I bought one hand to avoid the wait and love mine fwiw.

> You're satisfied with a device that is accepting pre-orders and hasn't shipped yet?

I ordered one in late January and it's arriving next week.

Why not use a RM2 then?

RM2 also has a nasty subscription service required to get all the features.

Looks great but I have trust issues. I would consider if it didn't have microphone (it has 4) and if it supported working offline.

> it has 4

A freaking eInk tablet with microphones what the hell lol

edit formatting...

They have a function for it. From TFA: "Capture detail in every meeting with audio recording and notes. Make a mark on your recording while taking notes, then tap on the mark to play the exact audio clip. Review your content more clearly and efficiently."

This is pretty clever. If I recall, the LiveScribe Smart Pen had/has this feature. You just draw some symbol and tap it, and it inserts a voice recording at that spot. Surprised this isn't standard on these products now.

I have a hisense eink pocket reader(5.84") and it has an eink refresh button. It's hisense's degoogled android(only support chinese and english and some menus have weird grammar).

But what's interesting is that if you hold the extra button it launches into a notes app which has dictation and unlike googles own dictation it does a pretty good job at capturing both chinese and english without needing to switch.

I didn't try it for longer than a couple of sentences, but in general it's an interesting idea. It does have a lot of very nice eink optimizations that other devices don't have.

Contrary to huawei however this device has a snapdragon and allows unlocking the bootloader. There is however no dev community around this device and I don't feel like fixing the headphone amp.

https://goodereader.com/blog/reviews/hisense-touch-music-pla...

Does this actually fit in your pocket? Front or back?

I have a Kobo Mini with a 5" screen that's perfectly pocketable, but it's on its last legs, and the 2012-era e-ink lag is noticeable.

I have looked at modern options but they're all 6" minimum with a lot of bezel, which means they won't fit.

There's a few more obscure Chinese options. Xiaomi has the 5.2" Inkpalm 5 mini. Runs Android but you need to convert it to English yourself. Aliexpress also has random 4.3" eInk devices.

It’s fits well in mine and I’m not a big guy. Also I really like how well and fast it renders normal android apps.

One Note had something similar in the early 2000s, I'm not sure if they still expose it.

tldr; china

The hardware is a dime a dozen now, what differentiates all these products is the software. I'm pretty skeptical on hardware companies making their own software interfaces.

I tried the Boox and while having Android is compelling, the writing experience kinda sucks. I prefer the Remarkable for having fewer but more polished features.

Doesn't the HW have something to do with the responsiveness? Hasn't that been a significant issue with eInk devices in the past, or is that resolved now?

In any case, the atrocities being committed in Ukraine have finally convinced me it is long past time to divest myself from Chinese slaveware. I have nothing but kindness for the people of Russia and China but will no longer voluntarily support companies in those countries with my business.

eink responsiveness itself: it's "slow", but much of it is in software. the remarkable demonstrates that pretty well - pen-to-display updates in ~20ms, which is more than fast enough. for further evidence, dasung's eink monitors are stunningly fast because of good software (and surrounding hardware that can drive it all) - they use the same panels as others AFAICT. (i.e. they're using the standard high-end e-reader panels. there are dramatically slower and more limited panels designed for signage, I think we can ignore those - many don't even have partial update support in their hardware)

The caveat there is that those fast updates are for black to white or white to black - gray to gray is slower, and accumulates error if you keep doing it (ghosting). remarkable has built their entire UI around this limitation: all UI is black/white, no grays. All tools (except the highlighters) draw black/white, no grays - all the texture is just black/white pixellation patterns. a lot of care has gone into working with the hardware's limitations at every level.... which is something android will never do.

other causes of latency often include stuff like aggressive CPU sleeping to make the batteries last weeks. if you get rid of that, and pre-render the next screen, changing screens is something like 100ms or less. in the end you have a pile of tradeoffs that generally mean worse user experience when poking the device to get better user experience somewhere else. which is true of everything.

How you implement the software makes a huge difference for e-ink displays.

The display is quite slow, so you have to implement delta screen updates instead of full-screen refreshes.

You also have to deal with ghosting in a similar manner that doesn't require the entire screen to flash from black to white several times.

I wanted to build my own e-ink tablet as I prefer OSS. The issue that makes e-ink tablets not worth building?

The expensive displays that cost between $150-$300 for 7-8 inch screens, excluding shipping.

I would like to have an e-Ink notebook for professional reading/writing/editing (no video/games).

ARM, 8 GB RAM, 64 GB persistent storage (SSD or SD card. 10" or 11" e-ink screen, good-quality physical keyboard, light, rugged, portable). Should be OSS powered, of course (Linux preferred).

Serious question, as I am interested in this device. Huawei has lately been in the news as a security threat. How can I justify using this device, to myself and my company, given the security threat Huawei supposedly represents? No trolls or shills need reply.

I have had the same question about Huawei products, and have never received any answer that would justify the risk of using one of their devices.

Will it have a browser?

It would be great for reading HN, coding, writing if I could use it with a browser.

I do all these in the browser and I only need black and white and no fancy tools. So even if the browser is much slower than on a desktop, it would still be great.

People usually recommend the "Boox" devices for that.

As they are running on Android you can therefore, after activating it, access the Play Store to get a browser running...

Maybe that's the way to go.

You don't even need to activate the Play Store. They include a browser out of the box.

Second the Boox; unfortunately there are gpl violations which is a shame, but I got an A4 sized one before I knew that and I use Pocket to read online stuff offline and use the built in reader to read books and work on papers (the dual note/read view is lovely).

Don't you find the A4 ones to large? I've been looking into these devices to replace my handwritten notebook but also for reading and so on. I think 10.3 inch might be better suited, what's your take on that?

I really like big screen because I read mostly papers. And I need to write in the margin for that.

You can download einkbro which has optimizations for eink screens.

I think I'd prefer to run Firefox with uBlock Origin etc. on it, though. For one, that enables synching with other devices, on the other hand, solid ad-blocking will probably be helpful with performance in general.

try einkbro

This could be an alternative to LiveScribe Smart Pen, in a classroom setting, which records audio as you write with it and then allows for immediate audio playback by tapping the section of the written notes that one needs to listen to again.

Only difference between tablet and the pen is that the pen requires physical paper notebooks to be purchased once the old notebook is used up.

With improved battery life, it'd make a very useful assistive technology in a classroom setting.

Will this product be affected by the US bans on Huawei?

Highly likely, but remember those bans affect the government, not private citizens. You’re free to buy Huawei products.

And government contractors. We got a questionnaire asking if we use any Huawei products at our company.

The screenshot of Home where they're showcasing widgets otherwise looks almost exactly like Boox. Other interactions also look like the Boox software. Not to mention the device looks like an update Boox Air. Are Boox and Huawei related?

Good for Huawei. Finally, an affordable alternative to Remarkable.

Doesn't it seem odd in the pictures and video the model is holding the pen/stylus as a rather unnatural angle. No shots where the models hand is touching the screen at the same time as the pen. I'd have thought that would be a feature they would want to promote (and would be shocked if this device does not have it), just seems odd.

Finally a company cracks this market. This is a beautiful device, I'll get one as soon as it is available.

10.3" is too small for a paper replacement - writing notes on such devices is too imprecise if one e.g. annotates PDFs etc. I got the latest Onyx A4 and that's the size that can be finally used to replace paper for all types of documents.

Is it the Boox Max Lumi 2? I'm considering getting one, any observations?

I use it only for reading PDFs, annotating them, writing notes and reading newspapers - for that it's a pretty good device. There might be some warts in a bit non-standard Android interface and also MS Office doesn't work without license (13" is too large for free versions), but overall I am happy.

Well my use case would basically be reading PDFs and sheet music, not really considering it to take notes. For that it's a bit expensive.

>MEMORY ROM:64 GB *The available internal storage may be smaller as part of the internal storage is occupied by software.

Memory, ROM(??), RAM all the same thing? Am I misunderstanding or is this not the full picture?

4 GiB RAM. Oddly it’s on the features page.

Thank you.

I will not touch anything Huawei with a ten-foot pole. Thanks.

But I also hope this will drive down prices.

Truly ReMarkable. (Pun intended.)

The OS looks similar to Onyx Boox's. Wouldn't be amazed if it a collab.

Under specs it lists 2 speakers and 4 microphones.

Waiting for the next move, an e-ink sub-notebook.

I wish Amazon had released one in this size. This goes onto to show how bad monopoly of Amazon is for e-reader category.

As an American, I'd rather have a foreign actor spying on me than my own government. The foreign actor has no jurisdiction over me.

> The foreign actor has no jurisdiction over me.

You can be subjected to blackmail and/or other hostile actions from a foreign jurisdiction.

Is that more likely than blackmail and/or hostile actions from home jurisdiction?

I don't know what the likelihoods of either are but if I had to guess I would say that yes, hostile third countries are more dangerous than my own country.

Also, I consider that I would have more recourse against an actor from my own jurisdiction, I think you have pretty much zero recourse against the government of a hostile third country.

I don't trust even my own government. I'm not *more* worried about China messing with me. The NSA has more info on me that could potentially be used against me than Huawei. And I've never once seen a situation where the NSA digs data out of their vault to help exonerate an American on trial.

Foreign actor doesn't have to abide by the Fourth Amendment either. They can just show the US whatever they want without a warrant.

The US would still be required to abide by the Fourth Amendment though.

> The US would still be required to abide by the Fourth Amendment though.

Only directly. The Five Eyes and other 'partners' routinely share intelligence with each other that their counterparts would face barriers to collecting.

So why am I worried about China again?

I don't know, there are many possible answers. Why ARE you worried about China?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Wait until you want to do some tourism

You haven't thought this one through my friend.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30513500.

With all the events happening right now I find it really hard to justify buying products made in China/Russia/Belarus.

This product looks great, but I'll never have a clean conscious knowing my money is by extension financing terrorists.

Why are you lumping China with the actual invaders? There's the Taiwan mess, and China don't participate in the sanctions regime, but it's not the same thing as actively invading. ( For the record, i think that sanctioning Russia is the morally correct thing to do)

It's simply because it's way overdue. China does countless things I can't support and for me this was the stick that broke the camel's back.

While not on top of the news cycle, the continuing un-freeing of Hong Kong, the treatment of the Uyghur population, and likely a number of other things, qualify for pastrami_pasta's “happening right now” description.

They are committing genocide, run concentration camps and forced labour. They actively threat Taiwan. That's more than enough to justify avoiding them.

They are not committing genocide. https://undocs.org/pdf?symbol=en/A/HRC/41/G/17

You're link is dead. Here [1] is a fairly nuanced take that concludes that most scholars would call what is happening "genocide," particularly due to the forced sterilizations.

Regardless of whether it matches everyone's exact definition, it's clearly an atrocity.

1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/is-china-committing-g...

Try this one: https://undocs.org/A/HRC/41/G/17

UN representatives didn't characterize the situation as a genocide.

Following the 'forced sterilization' link from the article you linked brought me to this one: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...

In there, they say frame it as an attack on minorities, but then they describe it as being applicable to people who already have 3 or more children. They just finished up a 1 child policy for the entire country and the Han majority are still reproducing below replacement levels.

There is plenty to disagree with about their policies, but it's not genocide.

China could easily tell Russia to knock it off.

They can't. Going against Russia means supporting USA, which is currently China's number one enemy.

Hong Kong

Tibet, too.

Tibet has been already managed by cn gov for more than 80 yrs. Many roads and railways are under construction. I can't see what problem in Tibet.

It seems like some people really wanted a war with China, and are very upset that they got a war with Russia instead.

Just wait a couple weeks until they get relobotomized by CNN & Friends, then they won't really care about whom they are going to war with so long as they throw enough bombs around

China is currently having about 18 border disputes. Amongst all the non land grabbing stuff they are doing.

That's ridiculous. Japan has a load of border disputes, and pacifism is literally written into their constitution. Most countries in east asia have them.

Japan claiming a few island is different to China claiming the whole south china sea and expanding its imaginary 9 dash line.

So trying to bring Japan into this is just ridiculous.

... The whole point about claiming islands is that they include an EEZ (exclusive economic zone). That's how you claim a 'whole sea'.

Of course, the real reason people argue over islands because it gets idiots riled up (Abe and successors depend on the nationalist vote, Xi depends on the nationalist faction, etc) and because geography in the far east is a mess of contradictions, so it's easy to make a plausible claim.

Foreign people getting excited over it is like a whole new meta level of stupidity.

Good thing I’m not a foreign people.

China refuses to condemn Russia and is towing their "peacekeeping" "denazification" line.

No longer, today they said they'll work for peace and condemn the violence.

Nope, as of 7 hours ago China merely "regrets" the violence necessitated by the "legitimate national security claims" of Russia.

https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1636556-20220301.h...

Do you have a source?

I have seen other statements.

> Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi deplored the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, calling it a “war” and saying that he is “extremely concerned” about the harm to civilians, his office said in a statement following a call with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.

Source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/bloomberg/eu-approves-list-to-c...

Unfortunately I think it's a mistranslation.

None of the Chinese language media reports him calling it a "war", but instead only a "conflict".

Official source disclosing the same call: http://www.gov.cn/guowuyuan/2022-03/01/content_5676356.htm

I think you have a good notion about not buying Chinese stuff, but that reason doesn't make much sense to me. I've heard people say that the US might have caused the deaths of half a million children in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion; do you buy anything from the US?

Nonono, you see these are the good guys, they had good intentions

They had good intentions supporting the invasion of Venezuela, or doing/supporting a coup in Brazil and Bolivia

They always have good intentions so kind

It is just odd why a place with such good intentions would not encourage Ukraine to sign the Minsk 2 agreements, but it was probably just an accident, all bad things such as these are always just accidents, yes, yes, accidents

(apologies for polluting HN like so, but the levels of apologia that we have seen on the last few days and the figureheads that have shown themselves back on the public eye is just vomit inducing)

And even though most Americans had nothing to do with it the ones that did are still walking free and will never face the ICC. [1]

All I can hope for is that after what is happening now that Russia will face the ICC and the western countries that have committed crimes will also face justice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...

EDIT: If you are going to down vote me, please explain your position. I don't see how anyone can disagree with war crimes being prosecuted.

"heard people say", "might have caused"

Good thing you're going with the science on this one, or you wouldn't be able to buy anything from anywhere.

Worse still, Huawei is actively participating in the Uyghur genocide.

Leaked documents link Huawei to China’s domestic spying in Xinjiang: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22834860/huawei-leaked-d...

Huawei patent mentions use of Uighur-spotting tech: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55634388

Finally someone pointed to this, thanks! As soon as I became aware that huawei supplies concentration camps, I stopped buying their products.

I loved products from Huawei and Xiaomi, but also can't justify buying their products since the Uyghur situation.

> , but I'll never have a clean conscious knowing my money is by extension financing terrorists

We should all stop buying American products as well, especially Apples'

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facing-hostile-chine...

I very much prefer China to any American Corporation

You prefer China (presumably here we mean the CCP) to any American corporation, because some American companies have done the moral wrong of sometimes folding to the CCP? Seems a bit inside out.

I guess he wanted to be aligned with OP, as in: Russia-Ukraine war => Don't support Russia. America-Afghanistan war => Don't support America.

> You prefer China (presumably here we mean the CCP)

There only exists one official China on this planet...

> because some American companies have done the moral wrong

Do we really wanna talk about all the wrong American governments and/or corporations have done in the past 75 years?

Or how many resources they depleted while large parts of the World were barely surviving?

Are you sure?

>There only exists one official China on this planet...

ROC an PRC agree on that at least.

Yes, go ahead and directly compare the US with China. How many deaths can be directly attributed to each? How free are the citizens of China to criticize the Chinese leadership? The US? Which of the two country's practice organ harvesting? Which of the two country's is practicing ethnic cleansing right now? Is there a single historical event in the US that everyone is in fear of discussing at all? How about talking about Tiananmen square in China? You don't think that China is "depleting resources"?

People like you always want to compare historic issues with current issues, when it advances your rabid anti-US rhetoric. The truth of the matter is that times change and people, countries, and industry is doing so much better now. Comparing the US of 75 years ago to the China of today is a dishonest juxtaposition, that both slanders the US and infantilizes China.

> Yes, go ahead and directly compare the US with China

usually people who are completely wrong don't even know how much wrong they are...

> Which of the two country's practice organ harvesting?

Countries like the U.S. and Canada did not include organ trafficking as a form of human trafficking when adopting their national laws on human trafficking. However, in the U.S. for example, some individual states like Massachusetts include organ trafficking within their state laws on human trafficking.

> Which of the two country's is practicing ethnic cleansing right now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_cleansing_in_t...

or do you prefer

https://www.pastemagazine.com/politics/ethnic-cleansing/trum...

> How about talking about Tiananmen square in China?

Do you ever talk about putting Pinochet in command in Chile?

Or of the many other atrocities you, as a nation, committed in recent history?

> You don't think that China is "depleting resources"?

Average meat consumption in China is at 45kg per person per year, USA is at 119kg per person per year. Or 264 pounds, if you prefer nonsensical units of measurement.

And you have been doing it for almost a century.

The United States accounts for about five percent of global population, but is responsible for 30 percent of global energy use and 28 percent of carbon emissions

> Comparing the US of 75 years ago to the China of today is a dishonest juxtaposition

China is still a better trade partner than USA, even today.

The only reason Americans hate Chinese so much (it's a recent thing, they used to love 'em) is simply because they beat them at manufacturing.

But when they buy US debt they are fine with it...

Or when they invest in Silicon Valley together with bloodthirsty Saudi Crown Princes, they open not only their doors, but also their hearts to them.

Here we can see Tim Cook together with Mohammed bin Salman, responsbile for the Khashoggi assassination in 2018.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/h6MR1tH-Ps__vGg-IZWyUTL-5Ho=...

(from https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18511540/silicon-valley-...)

Here we can see your elected President explaining how many fighter jets and other weapons your country sold to Saudi Arabia (translation: to Bin Salman, the man besides him)

https://gdb.voanews.com/7BB4C7FE-F921-4D0D-867F-53B7691931F0...

If you think that China is to be boycotted, well, I don't see a reason why to not boycott USA as well.

It's very simple logic, you probably don't see it from there, but from the real land of the free, you're not that different.

Both. Both. Both. In different forms, but, more or less, all of this occurred in both US and CN. And other countries too. People get butthurt a lot when someone's criticizing their country, but I don't care about countries, I care about humanity. And it was hard to overcome all the brainwashing.

It looks like a ripoff of the reMarkable 2 eInk pad. https://remarkable.com/ I’m surprised Apple or Microsoft hasn’t made an eInk display. Btw what happened to Amazon’s Kindle DX? That was literally the pioneer in the large eInk display space but it disappeared. I miss Kindle DX https://www.amazon.com/Kindle-DX-Wireless-Reader-3G-Global/

What electronics can you buy that aren’t basically Chinese devices at this point? Raspberry pi has assembly in Wales but parts are sourced normally, from China. I understand the feeling but, just like it’s hard to participate in the modern economy and oppose climate change, it’s hard to boycott China.

Really, I’m honestly looking for alternatives, not saying you’re wrong. How do we get out from this situation?

I think Samsung mostly avoids producing products in China.

https://www.makeuseof.com/where-are-samsung-phones-made/

> How do we get out from this situation?

Get together with close allies (Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, etc.) and decide to run afoul of the WTO. Favor domestic and close partners though heavy subsidies. This will upset the global balance of trade, treaties, etc. and will cause international tensions to rise, but it'll have to be done.

Build domestic factories in a special economic zone. Staff them with lots of immigrants and provide free education, child support, low cost of living, and a guaranteed path to citizenship. Open the flood gates, because we'll need lots of people.

Companies that build these factories get thirty years of 100% tax exemptions. Companies that source from them get lower taxes too.

If China complains, cut off the food and energy exports. It's their weakness and they'll step in line.

Are there any glaring flaws in this plan?

Huawei is a Chinese corporation. That’s a little different than simply being made there (which companies are finally starting to move away from)

I don’t understand; China is not taking part in the “events happening right now” (assuming you mean invasion of Ukraine); the global boycott focuses on Russia (and to a lesser extent on Belarus).

He/she means everything, because he/she cant otherwise verbalize what upsets him/her

All the news cycle becomes a tangled mess of "being upset at things", it doesn't really matter if these things are verifiable or not, the broader apparatus benefits either way so long as you become irrationally upset

I think we should make the effort to verbalize things in a precise way. Otherwise this leads to noise/disinformation in general (and in particular it dillutes message to boycott Russia to put pressure on Russia to stop the invasion).

You've already done that, and keep doing that by using services which rely on oil, electronics, food, etc.

I honestly enjoy this line of argument. Reminds me of the meme of a bunch of spidermen pointing guns at each other and shouting "No You" at each other. Tell me what country you are from and I tell you why your products should be banned.

I hope you don't own any Apple products.

Noting that, Huawei is especially special in these Chinese tech firms. I come from China and I, personnally, shall never buy any Huawei product. This is the compony really makes me disgusting. They advertise their products by tying themselves with Chinese nationalism. I.e., if you do not use Huawei as a Chinese, you betrayed your country. WTF. Their advertising strategy is even undermining the entire Chinese socirty, IMO. If you can endure this, or if you love their propagandas and support Chinese nationalism particularly, order your next Huawei phone or pad or something. Personnally I shall never. BTW, I do consider other Chinese firms. I declare that I do not have any interests with these companies, I'm only a humble consumer, believe it or not.

Wow, what a political tangent. If your conscience is clean, it's only because of your own convenient ignorance. Financing terrorists is something that is done by all militant empires. It's a pretty basic strategic military tactic. And the more militant the empire is, the more terrorist financing they're engaged in. Overthrowing democratically elected governments is a typical outcome.

But you'd buy an iPad right? Chinese factory owners certainly aren't making any money there /s

Chindle

What’s with all the CCP defenders and shills mass-downvoting and flagging every critical comment in this thread? What are you trying to hide? Instead of downvoting into oblivion Reddit/China-style, why not engage in healthy debate?

The tides have turned, the US is finally standing up to China (Biden is following in Trump’s footsteps though not as much as he should) and it’s only going to continue.

I wouldn’t buy Huawei toilet paper let alone a tablet I might write something on.

I made the awful mistake of buying one of their phones back when they partnered with Google for one of the nexus phones. Horrible device, and probably full of communism too.

Their own OS, their own hardware, their own brands, their own factories

Thanks to our dumb politicians, we produced dumb citizens, with a dumb education

The last thing I want is CPC reading my notes. Unless device can be loaded with trusted OS and air gapped I wouldn't take it even if they paid me.

You mean CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

Edit: Turns out officially it is CPC. English abbreviation is CCP.

I am really not an Apple fan, but this website is borderline plagiarism.

I would really love if the immense investments of Huawei would bring something genuine to light.

If anything imo it's much closer to the Samsung website than apple's

...It's a minimal, responsive, functional page for selling a product. Apple didn't invent this any more than they invented the PC or smartphone.

Would it be too much to ask for Hacker News to not promote products made in and benefiting evil regimes such as China and Russia? You wouldn’t allow The Nazipad 2000 to be showen here; what’s the difference?

Wouldn't it be better for the community to moderate this sort of thing? You can always downvote post. Or even better, you could engage in discourse on how this product is benefiting evil regimes. I'm not sure promoting censorship is the answer here.

A huge fraction of consumer electronics are made in China, so they shouldn't be listed here? iPhone is out of scope for HN?

Not to mention questions about who gets to decide...

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