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Comment by ahamilton454 | Hacker News Reader

I just started using this phone a couple weeks ago. It runs android 11, and the Ink OS that is runs is actually pretty clean and simple. I use Mint Mobile as my provider since TMobile is the only carrier that really supports it in the US. I am located in NYC and while the phone's coverage isn't like my older iPhone's its still pretty good. You can also get it off AliExpress for about $360 (At least I was able to). Not quite sure if it can use Android auto yet.

Overall I have had a good experience using the phone. My goal was to reduce my daily eye strain while not giving up the phone essentials, and it has certainly helped me do that.

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> runs android 11

that's a bummer. There is a killer new feature on android 12 that allows neostore (F-droid frontend) that allows apps to auto update without me having to remember to manually update them.

If you are in the market for a current state of the art e-ink phone, would having to do a few taps a month genuinely stop you buying this model? Seems like a very minor inconvenience for someone who values an esoteric technology combination.

> state of the art

> android 11

The e-ink part can be state of the art even if the rest of the phone isn't

Until you stop receiving updates.

Is that really an android 12 feature? F-droid Basic (almost the same app, same dev, same looks, without fancy direct sharing options; you can actually get it via old f-droid) can do that as well. They had to rewrite their implementation of how apps are installed, it took a while. With that only first install of the app needs confirmation.

Yes, previously on hacker news https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27218157

> Android 12 will let alternative app stores update apps automatically (xda-developers.com)

With user permission (allow installation from unknown sources or something), that must've been possible for a decade or so already.

Is this change just whitelisting a bunch of widely used app stores by default (especially in China)?

> With user permission (allow installation from unknown sources or something), that must've been possible for a decade or so already.

> Is this change just whitelisting a bunch of widely used app stores by default (especially in China)?

I am not an Android developer so this is just my understanding and could be wrong.

No, this is not about installing new applications. This is about allowing updates for apps already installed with user permission. All usual caveats apply. Update must be signed with the same key (it is an actual update, not an uninstall old + install new), yada yada

Thanks for the mention of f-droid basic - looks like what I need to have sane updates - without switching to neo store:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.fdroid.basic/

https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient

If you look into other Android E-ink devices they all run Android 11. I can't find where I saw it now, but I looked into it when I bought a Onyx Boox device and it apparently had something to do with the driver blobs for the screen not supporting Android 12 and higher.

Android 12 iirc changed a lot of things and removed some features too. Android 9 & 12 are particularly "notorious" in this regard, I still have my Pixel 5 on A11 as a result. (Accessing all "files"/killing 3rd party file managers is one of the things A12 changed, for example.)

Unfortunately there was a very good reason for making this change: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/more-than-1000-android-apps...

There is (of course) always a bunch of hardware that never gets updated when some big shift comes around... but there is also stuff that never gets updated because it was doing something it wasn't supposed to be.

You can't really enforce permissions in the absence of good sandboxing. And you can't really enforce permission without app review either, for a variety of social reasons (network effect, breaking unrelated functionality or outright refusing to work unless you give them location permissions, whatever). Which is the problem with the "just allow sideloading, bing bong so simple" crowd's argument, there already is ample evidence that plenty of apps have enough leverage to successfully extort the user.

Is that?

https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Store

https://f-droid.org/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/

I just added Neo Store to my boox device. Thanks so much! It is great!

If you have any other recommendations, I'd gladly hear them.

> I just added Neo Store to my boox device. Thanks so much! It is great!

Glad to be of service. If you haven't tried it yet, please give KOReader a try https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.koreader.launcher.fdroid...

(sorry if you knew this already)

There's no mention of GPS and NFC, I assume it lacks these modules?

I don't know about NFC, but until this moment I just assumed GPS was built in to any (qualcomm) soc that also integrated cellular. Or was it bt/wifi? It piggybacks some other antenna and hence 'just works'.

Are you finding it less addictive than a typical smartphone?

yes this is one of the reasons I got it. Good luck binging youtube at a refresh rate so low and only support for black and white.

Looks like there is a colour e-ink option. https://hisenseeink.com/products/hisense-a7-cc-color-e-ink-s...

Presumably, the refresh rate for it is even worse.

According to the product page, the refresh rate is equally as fast as the b&w refresh.

Resolution is the big compromise with color e-ink, the effective pixel density is cut in half when the color layer is enabled. With the current best panels you get 300dpi in mono mode but only 150dpi in color mode, and fidelity of the mono mode is compromised compared to a mono-only panel with the same resolution. The color rendition still isn't great either.

This is the A7 which is an older version. I would make sure it still has 4G support otherwise no carriers will support it in the US

I accidentally stumbled upon a feature in YouTube that's killed my binging altogether.

Turn YouTube Watch History off (Google Account > Data & Privacy > YouTube History). I mostly did it cuz I didn't want Google to have a history of all my YouTube videos, but the accidental effect is that when I go to youtube, I literally have a blank screen (no suggested videos) and instead it just says "turn search history back on"

This means that I have to actually search for a particular topic to start watching about it, and most times when I'd be consuming more, I don't have the mental capacity to pick a topic I care about.

The one hitch is that if you subscribe to channels, you'll still see all those videos, but those update very infrequently and you don't see a bunch of nonsense you don't have to watch.

I have done that and it is very nice. I also use this chrome extension https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu...

That is the Youtube start page I want but I use history regularly to find videos between devices.

Going eink helped me cut back video content. But I ended up listening to more podcast at faster speeds and since i have youtube premium, backgorund listening. It's... better, since I treat it as background noise and ears don't get fatigued / strained like eyes do.

What is typing like on this? My daughter has a Kobo Clara and I haven't been impressed with the responsiveness of it.

It feels like an iphone 8 keyboard that is about to die. It isn't the quickest thing in the world, but good enough to respond to texts and emails.

Kobo is notorious for having atrocious response time. I'm on my third generation of Kobo reader and it's still dogshit slow.

The periodic crashes are also really tiresome - I regularly have to hard-power-cycle the thing and often lose my reading progress. Why this has been a problem for 6+ years is beyond me but my guess is that they're spending very little on R&D/QA, running on an ancient SoC.

> Kobo is notorious for having atrocious response time. I'm on my third generation of Kobo reader and it's still dogshit slow.

I am impressed by your commitment

> I regularly have to hard-power-cycle the thing and often lose my reading progress.

Kobo must be very good, in other ways!

Works fine, this has the fastest eink screen available.

Given the limited framerate of the device, I wonder whether running videos comes with latency that makes listening to them impossible.

It's expected that E-ink would demolish video quality, but does it has an incidence on sound if you want to listen to a video on the metro line?

There's a youtube demo in the article.

Why would screen refresh have any influence on audio latency?

How's the battery life?

about 3 days (maybe 4 days) of normal usage

How many hours of screen-on time do you get in those three days?

"Screen-on" is a meaningless term in the context of eink.

I am very curious to see if Android Auto works on it, because if it does I'd seriously consider it.

Does it have a lot of Chinese junk-ware on it, though?

I will check in a few days if it can run android auto and update here. To be honest, it probably has a lot of junk-ware on it, this really isn't my domain of expertise though. I can tell you from a user experience, it has been very easy to use.

How is the battery life?

About 3 days long with normal usage (maybe 4)

Are you able to find or guess the screen on time per charge? 3 days is wildly different for someone who uses their phone an hour per day, vs someone who scrolls social media for 12 hours a day.

Does it support american networks?

TMobile and MVNOs like mint mobile offer decent support (at least in NYC)

It happening to support a band or two used in NYC doesn't tell us much - we need to know all the cellular bands it supports, because even a 6 year old iphone doesn't support bands used in a lot of areas. Cell companies are now focused on 5G and a phone that doesn't support most US 4G frequencies, and 5G, is going to be increasingly hobbled.

Edit:

https://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/344c59bb

Supports no UTMS (3G) bands, ten LTE bands and no 5G bands.

LTE-FDD 850 MHz (B5) LTE-FDD 900 MHz (B8) LTE-FDD 1700 MHz (B4) LTE-FDD 1800 MHz (B3) LTE-FDD 2100 MHz (B1) LTE-FDD 2600 MHz (B7) LTE-TDD 1900 MHz (B39) LTE-TDD 2300 MHz (B40) LTE-TDD 2500 MHz (B41) LTE-TDD 2600 MHz (B38)

An iPhone 8, six years old, supports twenty five LTE bands.

According to Tmobile's website, they use the following bands:

4G LTE

    Band 2 (1900 MHz)
    Band 5 (850 MHz)
    Band 4 (1700/2100 MHz)
    Band 66 (Extension of band 4 on 1700/2100 MHz).

Extended Range 4G LTE

    Band 12 (700 MHz)
    Band 71 (600 MHz)

...and then the 5G/5GUC bands.

So the overlap would be B5, B1/B4, B39. No support for 5G. No support for UTMS, band 66 or extended range...so good luck using it in rural areas.

> T-Mobile

too early in the morning for me (:

> T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States.

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