Hands on Review of the Hisense A9 4G E Ink Android 11 Smartphone

goodereader.com

6 pointsGordonS2 comments

i have been using an earlier model of this device, the a5, and it is really an incredible device. you can watch videos, reading especially hacker news is a dream, it has a great audio chip and headphone jack, and the battery life is incredible.

i've been using it recently on a backpacking trip as my primary map source and for listening to music, and in five days the battery is above eighty percent still. the only reasons i haven't upgraded is that it still works great and there are no jailbreak options yet for the newer models. it is not my daily driver, but i would leave lcd screens or o l e d screens behind in an instant if apple or google made a paper display device. with jailbreak on mine i feel relatively safe it is not sending any data i don't approve, but because the jailbreaking is a volunteer effort, updates come out too infrequently for me to use as a daily driver.

I tested the color screv version (the CC) which was magical but it lakced the contrast of regular epaper. There are improvements in the color epaper i've heard.

Thanks, this is quite helpful. The constant phoning home to China is also my main issue with these devices. When talking about jailbreaking, are you referring to this thread? https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/is-there-a-way-to-root-hi... Because it looks awful, if even doable at best. I'd also ideally like to have some kind of LineageOS on there, but due to the speciality of the eink driver this is most likely far from ever feasible. Another question, is the map really usable in BW? I'd imagine a lot of information and usability being lost by the absence of color.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com