Sadly it seems no e-SIM support?
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2025
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I see a hint of color, so I just know the refresh rate is going to be awful.
How long is software support? Is the bootloader unlockable?
I would love something like this so long as it was unlocked and wasn’t weighed down by Android.
once it's linux and par with a pixel 7 for performance I'm in. android's future is looking a bit too unpromising right now
I mean that's really sick and I hope it does well because I'd love to see that tech go further. Fairly tempted as I don't watch/play games much on my phone anyways.
They've made several e-ink phones by now.
It's just not suited for it. Even though it CAN do fairly smooth animation, it always looks like absolute ass due to the ghosting.
The tech is doing fine tho. There are two decent ways to do color now (one fast, one slow), and the picture quality is mind-boggling when you let it refresh properly. It's absolutely fantastic for reading books, but it's only gotten better for my favorite use-case, which is comics and manga. The ability to do color adds so much.
It's also in use in a ton of industries. There are re-usable eink price-tags for store shelves that you can put price and product info on. While just sitting there showing info, they use no power, while still being able to be updated digitally when needed.
I also realized the live timetable at my local bus-stop is actually a giant eink panel. Which makes so much sense. Compared to a giant LCD panel it uses orders of magnitude less power, and is even more readable in daylight without any kind of backlight, and it only needs to update once a minute. It doesn't show any info with more than 60 second precision anyway.
But eink simply cannot compete with LCD/OLED in terms of emissive color quality and refresh rate. While it straight up wins in terms of daylight readability, longevity and power efficiency. Supposedly the panels lose contrast over time, but I've never noticed it happening myself, even on decades old devices.
For normal use tho, eink sucks. I avoid ever using my ereader for anything except actually reading. Writing, doing any kind of browsing, (even to find something to read), is horrible. It's like using a phone with gloves on, but all the time.
The experience is at its best when you just continue reading something you already had open, and only ever interact with the display or a button to turn the page. The moment you need to pan, zoom, select something, use and on-screen keyboard, etc. you start wishing you could use something else.
I literally use my phone to find what to read, then switch to the ereader to actually read.
It's absolutely fantastic for reading books, but it's only gotten better for my favorite use-case, which is comics and manga. The ability to do color adds so much.
Do you have a preferred device? I’m really curious but it’s hard to know where to start with colored screens.
Currently on a Boox Go Color 7. My previous reader was a Likebook Mars, not color. Both are android based, meaning I can install Tachiyomi for manga. I now use syncyomi with TachiSY, allowing me to sync my Tachiyomi collection between my phone and ereader, so I can manage my library and read the occasional chapter on my phone, while syncing all that to my ereader so I never need to manually do any library management on it.
The Go 7 is just a tad small for western comics, but it's usable. It's in the sweet spot for manga. I really like it. I technically prefer the size of the Mars, but the smaller footprint on the Go 7 has meant I've actually brought it with me a lot more, and the physical page buttons are simply superior.
The two ways to do color that currently exist, are Triton/Kaleido and Spectra.
Triton and the newer Kaleido, consist of a normal black and white panel overlayed by a color filter that divides it into RGB sub-pixels. For example, to do red, the bw screen goes white under the red sub-pixels, and black below the rest. This produces red, though to maintain the brightness of full white the filter isn't very strong, so it's a fairly pale result. The filter means it can't go as white as a pure bw screen, but in my experience the difference is tiny. You can just barely see the difference, even side-by-side. And even tho the colors are pale, seeing book covers and comics with even a little bit of color is really nice.
The other way is having actual colored ink, or multi-color cells, and some other ways. What these all have in common is that the refresh rate is truly glacial. Like ten seconds for a single page turn slow. You'll find these in digital picture frames and such, no ereaders have been made using these methods.
I would not consider a Kindle unless you can be sure you can jailbreak it. I had a Kobo at one point, and while I really liked it, having gotten used to Tachiyomi I could not go back to manually converting manga into .CBZ files and syncing them to my reader.
The ability to install android apps enables so many options for finding things to read, and ways to read them.
Thank you very much for the information! This was really helpful.
I’ve looked at Boox devices before so it’s good to see that people are using and enjoying them.
Just another dropping kudos for your message, I've been eyeing the ink color tech for a while and I'm kinda ready to drop my jailbroken old kindle and was considering the kobo libra color...
You have given me some thinking with the boox. Kinda nice it has full android although I can read that the battery is the drawback then. Care to share your battery life with the boox? Between good battery life or full android... I might go with the battery I think. As long as I can run koreader that would be enough for my use.
With the Likebook Mars I got used to charging it often. I was exepecting the same with the Boox, but it has suprised me in a good way.
It came configured to power off within a couple hours when unused. Which is one solution. If you only read every few days, setting it to turn off when unused does ensure it will have juice to spare the next time you pick it up, though you'll have to wait about a minute to actually be reading again.
To avoid booting it all the time, I currently have it set to power off after 2 days of inactivity. Which is essentially never, unless I take a weeklong pause in reading.
This has meant I'm plugging it in once a week or so. Still more often than the month my Kobo used to last, but not bad at all. I can still empty it in one day if spend all day reading with the frontlight on, but that's true for any reader.
If I queue up a bunch of manga downloads, it can drain from fully charged to empty in about 2 hours.
When it does go unused, power off within two days means it only wastes about 10% of the battery sleeping before powering off entirely. (That translates to about 5% per day when sleeping, that's with network off during sleep and all apps suspended). Meaning I've not had to charge it when I go to use it after a longer break.
I don't use koreader myself, but it's on f-droid and hence extremely easy to install on the Boox.
I love e-ink screens and Always wanted one of those phones, but even the "budget" ones are too expensive for me :(
For anyone interested but still cares about their privacy, you can "debloat" your standard Android ROM and remove most of Google's crap via ADB: https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
Thanks, will try this out later
I always wanted to try eInk on a phone. If there is ever an alternative OS for that one it might be a tempting deal.
Man I really am far too into e-ink lol. These aren't even close to new they have mostly been for the domestic (chinese) market in the past though. Most people who have got one have been happy though because they are exactly as advertised. An e-ink phone.
The HiBreak S black-and-white model is priced at US$249, while the color E Ink version bumps that up to $279.
I’d love to jump in, but android’s still a no. I’m sure Graphene or other would run, eventually, maybe, but honestly just make it linux, let’s gooooooo
Folks choosing the black-and-white HiBreak S will get visuals at 720 x 1,440 pixels (276 ppi), plus the company's own fast-refresh technology that supports refresh rates of up to 24 frames per second.
Wow, for e-ink that's pretty good.
Nothing in the article about battery life though. I have to wonder if having a e-ink screen would extend the battery life of a phone noticeably.
There is this paragraph:
Bigme promises that the 3,300-mAh battery will "maintain a charge for a remarkably long time" – though doesn't actually specify how long that might be. You'll need to plug in more often if you make use of the 36-level front light when strong ambient light isn't available.
Vague, but that's not the author's fault. Aside from GPS, games are the other thing that uses loads of battery and you won't be playing many graphically demanding games on that display - but we want numbers!
Brother, did you read the article?
3,300-mAh battery will "maintain a charge for a remarkably long time" – though doesn't actually specify how long that might be.
I skimmed it, but not well apparently.
We're all faulted. I forgive you.
But can it run a FOSS Linux distro such as Mobian or Droidian or /e/OS or postmarketOS? (Year of the linux phone 2040)
Does the unconventional screen work on Linux?
Is the bootloader unlockable?
I would need android auto, besides that, this looks great
But it has android auto?
From what I was reading it doesn't work, the DPI is all screwed up
Ah man, that's disappointing
Screen size: 5.8"
Device size: 6.8"
CPU/SoC: unknown
Parent company:
Xinruizhi (Shenzhen) Industrial Co., Ltd.
https://www.xinruizhi-china.com/pages/about-us
A friend used to have a phone case that had an e-ink display and it was great for handling notifications and of course reading webpages and ebooks. Something more integrated (it just mirrored the normal screen in e-ink) could be brilliant.
I'm assuming that the reason the colour screen is lower resolution is the processing power required; the Kobo Clara's colour version has twice the processing power for the same resolution, but still isn't as crisp because of the grid necessary for how it works. The article says Bigme has some custom tech, so we'll have to wait to see what the reviews say about how it looks.
So, at that price point, what's the catch? I'm fine with Android, don't watch video on my phone, would love the battery savings.
If it's the same as past e-ink phones it'll be slow. But nothing you're going to do on an e-ink phone is super likely to require that much power anyways unless you are using your phone far differently than I am.
Not using mine for video or even social media. Main uses cases are calling, text, GPS, map, compass, web surfing when I have to. E-ink sound good for me?
After watching this review I am actually going to say yeah probably. The ghosting has gotten way better than I remember it being for real time apps. If youre interested watch the review he goes over most of your use cases.
Wow! Not in the market ATM, but I'm sold. IR blaster?! Impressive view in the sunshine. I struggle on the trail, worse on the water, trying to see where the hell I'm at and where I'm pointed.
That review was enough to catch my interest. I may well go for this when I need a new phone.