Boox Palma Review: A Phone-Sized E-Ink Android Device That Isn't a Phone | Hacker News Reader

Boox Palma Review: A Phone-Sized E-Ink Android Device That Isn't a Phone

ewritable.com

66 pointstodsacerdoti59 comments

I don't like being negative, but I feel like I am obligated to pipe up every time I see Onyx products hit the front page here[0], because I was one of the people who politely requested that Onyx abide by the terms of the licenses for the Free Software that they use in their products. To this day, they refuse to do so.

- Onyx still doesn't release kernel sources for their products.

- Onyx still uses outdated and vulnerable builds of Android, with questionable settings such as disabling SELinux

- Their devices are very chatty back to servers in the PRC. And their privacy policies are pretty bad (and by bad, I mean non-existant! [1])

- Their digitizer API is not very documented and difficult to build off of, so claims of being friendly to 3rd party developers are overblown.

- They shut down their support forums when the chorus of disgruntled customers began to get too loud

And even worse, they are using claims of "anti-China movement" as an excuse to not comply with the GPL [2].

Please, we've got to stop shilling this company's products with these affiliate-link blogs. They seem completely opposed to the hacker 'ethos' of this site. Otherwise, why not also shill the hundreds of Oppo or Honor or Huawei phones being released every year?

Edit: To give a positive remark, I recommend the reMarkable tablet. It's what I purchased after I sold my onyx tablet. It runs linux and they give you root access out of the box! There is a vibrant community of people developing programs for the rM and even running other linux distros on the device.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21041543

[1]: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/onyx-bo...

[2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/hsn7kx/onyx_usin...

This company and its products keep gracing the HN front page [1, 2]. Most manufacturers don't get this kind of coverage.

Flagging the article will help.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boox

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=onyx

I don’t think flagging a post for that is a good use of that system, because the submission isn’t breaking the rules. But a comment in this thread as a reminder seems reasonable.

I'd say it's likely not due to any shenanigans, but simply because HN readers in general love eInk devices.

That said, I do which there were more players in the market. If you want an Android powered e-Ink device, you don't have a lot of options at the moment.

Since you seem well informed: what about Ratta, the maker of Supernote? Their software seems pretty good, and they are about to release another product.

They are also a Chinese company, I believe, which does make me so what nervous about writing down any IP...

I have a Boox Nova and it’s really nice but I won’t buy another one. Boox is a notorious GPL violator.

I feel like this device would be 10x more compelling if it had an actual modem.

Like, the software looks decent, the display is nice, the battery life is good. But why would you use it if you have to carry a separate phone? Surely it wasn't that hard?

The target audience is probably:

- Already carrying around a larger, heavier ereader

- Not interested in using an e-ink display for stuff like videos, instagram

I have one. I use it as a replacement for my phone when I am in bed, just for checking email, reading the news, Anki flashcards etc. I also take it out on long bike rides so I can do those same things while sitting in the sun on the beach or something. (Phone screen is pretty much useless in direct sun by comparison.) It's not a big deal to connect to your phone's wifi hotspot briefly to sync. Main point is that you have the phone experience without the eye strain, and if it saves battery on your phone at the same time, bonus. Yeah, you're carrying more stuff, but if you're really going somewhere where carrying two devices is going to be too much weight, then you probably would prefer a regular phone screen over eink anyway.

You can get a similar e-ink experience with the Dasung E-ink Phone Monitor. The advantage is that it just mirrors your phone display and acts as a touch screen. You can keep using your existing apps without having to transfer data to a new device, and when you upgrade your phone you're also upgrading your e-reader. Just make sure to get the wired or wireless option suitable for your phone type.

https://shop.dasung.com/products/dasung-6-7-e-ink-phone-moni...

I tried their 25 inch monitor. E-Ink is such a better experience. I don't feel so jacked in to the matrix when I use it.

The ghosting and refresh rate are holding this technology back though. Definitely not main driver status yet.

LED and LCD screens seem to shift the brain into an agitated frequency. I wish they'd make more progress with E-Ink!

Is this an intuitive personal observation of yours ("shift the brain [...] frequency")? You're on to something there.

You should look up Kaufman et. al.'s "High-Low Split" research:

> Two initial randomized experiments revealed that individuals who completed the same information processing task on a digital mobile device (a tablet or laptop computer) versus a non-digital platform (a physical print-out) exhibited a lower level of construal, one prioritizing immediate, concrete details over abstract, decontextualized interpretations. This pattern emerged both in digital platform participants' greater preference for concrete versus abstract descriptions of behaviors as well as superior performance on detail-focused items (and inferior performance on inference-focused items) on a reading comprehension assessment.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2858036.2858550

tl;dr: using a screen for cognitive tasks appears to "bring down" your thought process to a lower, concrete level, rendering you unable to perform with a "Big Picture" understanding of the task.

Sadly unsupportable by GrapheneOS, https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/11655-install-gos-on-onyx-b...

> it's far from meeting the security requirements. It has a Snapdragon 662 with Android 11 firmware/software. See https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices for the list of requirements. No particular reason someone can't make a secure e-ink device but the existing ones are awful in this regard.

Pixel Tablet is relatively affordable, supported by GrapheneOS, with 8GB RAM, MTE, pKVM nested virt that can run standard Linux VMs alongside Android, Titan RoT, Tensor TPU, UWB precision location tracking and WiFi6.

Not sure I could care less about the security of my e-reader.

Secure, offline, handheld e-ink Android device with pKVM VMs could be used for more than e-reading.

Many people end up logging into Google for the play store which puts a pretty sensitive credential on an untrusted device.

> Pixel Tablet is relatively affordable, supported by GrapheneOS, with 8GB RAM, MTE, pKVM nested virt that can run standard Linux VMs alongside Android, Titan RoT, Tensor TPU, UWB precision location tracking and WiFi6.

It's also not phone sized or e-ink, which make it basically entirely different than the Boox Palma

Pixel is supported until June 2028.

Palma is running a closed fork of Linux with non-upstream drivers, https://old.reddit.com/r/Onyx_Boox/comments/1btqzoa/palma_is...

  - Palma was released at August, 2023.
  - It's operating system was Android 11
  - 05 Feb 2024 security supports was ended for Android 11

  If you compare these dates: August, 2023 and 05 Feb 2024. It is only 7 months of lifetime - between release and end of security support.. Somebody in Onyx decided to use Android 11 instead of 13 that was released 15 Aug 2022 - 1 year before Palma release.

Small size and e-ink screen.. for 7 months.

Does graphene actually setup nested virt? From my research nested virt on android never got any community traction. no usable soluons.Am I wrong?

> Does graphene actually setup nested virt?

Nested virt with pKVM is the way forward to balance the competing goals of security, usability, freedom, individuals, and corporate supply chains. pKVM is sill in development for GrapheneOS. It's present and running, but VM features are not yet actively used.

AVF (pKVM for Pixels or gunyah for Qualcomm) is enabled and usable by developers on stock Android 11+, https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/modules/V...

> From my research nested virt on android never got any community traction

It will take time before mobile nested virt is easily accessible to end-users, but pKVM was upstreamed to mainline Linux and AVF was shipped on Android two years ago, so nested virt is here for the long haul and can incrementally reduce dependence on TrustZone.

Nested virt has been available on x86 for a decade (KVM, Bromium vSentry / HP SureClick, Microsoft Defender App Guard), on Apple Silicon since M2, MacOS since M3 and iPadOS since M4 (Secure eXclave VM). On mobile, it can sidestep some business model conflicts which torpedoed Nokia, RIM, Maemo, Meego, Tizen, etc.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/onyx-bo...

Zero interest in reading a lecture on privacy from an ad company

I've been using the Palma and had the exact same experience as the reviewer. It's pretty great as a bedside device.

If it had a sim card slot, I'd drop my phone and move to the Palma as my primary device

I like it precisely because it doesn't have a cellular radio in it.

But the problem is I still need two devices

Are you sure it's absolutely necessary? Or do you just want it? Is it worth someone potentially knowing your precise location at all times?

I have been seriously considering picking up one of these for a dedicate e-reader device just for The Economist (using a custom version of the Economist I create every week), mostly for around my house.

The main thing holding me back is still needing to carry two devices when im mobile, and of course, investing in hardware for a single publication.

I really prefer reading on e-ink, I like the form factor of this, and the performance seems decent for reading.

Do it. I got a Kobo Elipsa 2E largely so I could read Communications of the ACM. A separate device with a screen optimized for reading, zero notifications, and an unalluring web browser is exactly what I need for concentrated reading.

Oh! How is the Koba scrolling performance? I want to scroll my articles, not page them.

I don’t know if it has that option.

I'm interested in your remix of The Economist.

Here you go:

https://mikechambers.com/blog/post/2024-08-02-digest--improv...

Ping me if you have any questions.

The Moaan Plus (available on AliExpress and from other dropshipping marketplaces) also sports an e-ink display in a similar size, is significantly cheaper, and just as functional as a single-purpose e-reader device. Just takes a bit of tweaking to overcome the initially chinese-only interface and sideload a replacement keyboard (the default one is horrendous) and e-reader apps.

I bought a Moaan Plus to see if it would work for me - basically, is a phone-sized eInk ebook reader something I'd keep using?

3 months on: I love this little thing and carry it everywhere. Although it's just slightly smaller than my Pixel 8 Pro, it feels close to weightless. It's small and light enough that I can just drop it in a pocket and head out for the day, then pull it out and read when I'm e.g. waiting in a supermarket queue. I find it hard to imagine a better form factor for reading in these types of ad-hoc situations that come up several times a day.

Battery life is fine - given how I use it, I drop it on a charger for a few minutes each day and it never goes flat. No idea how many days the battery would last if I didn't do that, but I don't use it the same way as I use my 7" ebook reader so it's not a concern.

Similarly although it's notionally an Android tablet, I don't think it would work as a replacement for a typical tablet or phone. FWIW, I currently have 700+ apps installed on my Pixel 8 Pro, and just 6 on the Moaan Plus: - F-Droid (essentially a replacement for the Google Play store) - KOReader, which meets all my reading needs in combination with Calibre on laptop and Wallabag - Koofr, so I can access all my ebooks whenever I can sync via an Internet connection - Markor, for capturing notes in Markdown - DuckDuckGo, because eventually I'll need a browser at some point - Simple Keyboard, to replace the supplied Chinese keyboard app which is useless to me

Downsides of the device: - it's Android 11, which may or may not be a concern for you (given how I use it, it's not a concern for me) - no Google Play, so you're going to have to install software from somewhere else. F-Droid is a pretty good substitute, but doesn't have all the apps you might want. The big one missing for me is Zotero, which I'd love to have on this device - no fingerprint or facial recognition, which would concern me if this thing didn't live in my pocket 99% of the time

Upsides: - it's small enough that you can carry it with you anywhere, and close to weightless compared to a phone. If you're someone who reads a lot, this can be a game changer as you can carry a bunch of books in just about any situation - it's about half the price of a Boox Palma - 2Gb RAM and 64Gb of storage, more than enough for ebooks - fast enough - eInk screen, which is way easier on the eyes than reading on a LCD screen - limited set of features, which means I'm not tempted to install more apps on it to try to make it do more than I need

I've been using this thing daily for about five months and really adore it. I use it as a Kindle replacement and with Readwise Reader as a longform article dump. I've read more longform pieces in the last few months than last few years combined. The device is incredibly light, and maintains battery even if you leave it idle all day (unlike my kindles which often drained themselves). Anyway, it's been a nice surprise, the palma.[0]

[0]: https://craigmod.com/roden/091/#digital-reading-in-2024

I'd be interested, more so in the Highsense one that includes cell data, but they all run outdated, EOL Android. That's a non-starter for something connected to the internet with anything remotely important on it.

Indeed, anything that is currently below Android 12 (and eventually Android 13) is a no-go for connecting this to anything business-critical.

https://endoflife.date/android

Looks like Hisense stopped making eink phones.

Kobo e-readers run Android under the hood. There are some very small ones, too. If you're cool with Pocket, you can use that to sync articles from browser to e-reader. Personally, I never have my Kobo online.

I use the Pocket functionality pretty frequently, it's nice for tossing articles and other things I'd like to read over to the Kobo from whatever I happen to be using at the moment.

Doesn't deserve to be flagged, but man, it is super super sad that there's just so so few devices of any type that are consumer accessible and/or run modem androids.

The e-ink market keeps pushing out some incredibly decrepit products. Maybe at some point there'll be some devices built around chips with some upstream Linux support & something can be done, but most of these e-ink devices are built around pre-rotted/already-decayed platforms (older hardware with no path to modern software support).

I haven't seen any overwhelming support. I absolutely love this thing. Coming from Kindle and Kobo. It's not a good smartphone replacement. It IS a fantastic E-reader. I carry it with me everywhere. I do Anki flashcards, do my Obsidian notes, read my Kindle and Kobo libraries I've accumulated finishing books I've procrastinated on, I use Omnivore.app for any articles I find on my Pixel, and the web browser for things like Crossplane Docs which don't get captured nicely as an article. I can share notes with Android to my Obsidian. Look I know it's Android, I know it's probably not the latest kernel, I know it has drawbacks. But from my personal experience this device has single handedly revived my ereading and replaced 90% or my doom scrolling because of the convenient form factor.

Other vendors make competition! I want color and a more secure android please.

Do you think others might like it as well or do you think your love of it is more idiosyncratic? As a fellow Anki user, I know the feeling of "Why don't other people LOVE this???". Only to learn they have good reasons - reasons that, for whatever reason, don't apply to me.

I probably won't be able to resist this when/if there is an open source firmware such as LineageOS.

Hisense A9 is an E-Ink phone that supports LineageOS: https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/s/suBlD74nlP

It is pricey but looks great.

Unfortunately Boox are serial GPL violators so there isn't much to work with.

That is unfortunate.

AIUI LineageOs is an alternative Android OS. That would be particularly useful to replace GPL-violating software. Why wouldn't that be possible?

Because Boox won't give you the sources to all the kernel patches that allow Linux to run on these devices. If we didn't need that, there would be no problem, but Linux doesn't have a standard "E-ink" DRM driver so there's no hope to getting this working without a rather intensive reverse-engineering effort.

I'm curious, are you able to use it to read text at night when it's dark? Because that's probably the only reason I would use it, but at that point it would be better to get an e-reader or something, I guess.

It has a front light (though its lowest setting is brighter than I wish it was)

I hear the Hisense a9 front light goes really really low. It’s comfy for me in darkness an inch from my face.

I found mobiscribe devices to be an amazing value. Got usable android(still very buggy) but without the usual Chinese spyware. Bought mine for $99 from them. Use it for most of my reading.

I used to use a Hisense A9 eink smartphone on T-Mobile USA to run Android apps like Messenger, Kindle, Audible, Infinity for Reddit, Discord, koreader, and Hacker News via EinkBrowser. Here's a video of it in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvO9ScTdwz8

Unfortunately, T-Mobile USA no longer works on it, the band it used was refarmed to 5G and the Hisense A9 is 4G only. Now I use it wifi only. I hear the latest Bigme Hibreak eink phone still gets some USA LTE reception though.

The TLDR of eink phones: great for reading and text, terrible for videos and scrolling

well, I think that applies to virtually every eink device.

Still annoyed folding phones settled on basically another screen in front and we still don't have a proper successor to yota.

Nearly $300 seems a bit too rich for my blood - will definitely buy one second hand once I can get one for about $100.

i have one of these. the display is exactly what i want but iirc the tuning app and some other necessary parts are not open.

there's allegedly a root method available. but nobody's distributing a rom, and i haven't had the time to look into building one.

i sideload epubs and use it as an offline ereader.

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