Minimal Phone: Low-priced smartphone with E Ink display and complete keyboard
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78 replies
Before you get excited, it's an IndieGoGo project.
The one and only time I bought into a project on Indiegogo was for a phone that said it was shipping that month, even though the company had been delaying it for a year already (unbeknownst to me) and they had no idea when they were going to finish. It was straight up fraud, Indiegogo let the company do it without consequence, and 2.5 years later the project is still up on Indiegogo. Now I’m out $800, and the asshole company is still claiming they’ll send all the backers their phones any day now. They’ve been literally saying it for years.
Don’t learn the hard way like I had to. Never back an Indiegogo project.
!RemindMe 1 year
Isn't indiegogo just like Kickstarter? There's never a guarantee you'll ever get the thing you back.
I am not certain of the differences between Kickstarter and Indiegogo. You’re right that there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the items you backed, but in my case, the company making the phone was straight up lying about their progress and release schedule, and not just having poor judgment about timelines, but actually committing fraud, and Indiegogo took no action against them when hundreds of backers brought it to their attention.
Yeah. I learned the same way with "Jack". What a scam.
Aww shucks I was actually a bit interested
Is there something in particular about Indiegogo that I missed, or are you just pointing out it's crowd funded? (and that means you could lose your money without anything in return)
Probably the chances of them never delivering being more than 0
They have a history of really hilarious scams
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/biggest-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-scams/
Yeah, it was just the crowd funding aspect. I've never used Indie GoGo.
So it goes well with my Cicret bracelet
I'm not disinterested, though $350 is a little steep ($450 if you're not an 'early bird'). Ideally it would be bootloader unlockable and rootable as well. I would probably use it like a PDA of old.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-minimal-phone-first-e-ink-qwerty-phone#/
Preliminary Specs:
I looked into E-ink displays this summer and the tech is just so high priced
Wasn't e ink in the highest tier of patents stifling advancement?
Yeah, licensing fees are super high. Who knows what kind of battery life and displays we might have on our personal devices today if eink wasn't so encumbered.
It's fucking crazy cause my city just put e-ink displays on bus stops and I thought it was because they were going cheap, I guess not, though.
Because e ink is basically perfect for bus stops. You don't need to update more than once a minute or two and it uses basically no power for running 24/7.
The phone still has a 3D printed shell in the video. Doesn’t look promising.
Man, what I really want is a e-ink smart watch....
RIP in peace Pebble
I wonder how hard it would be to open source something similar with something like an nrf52 or similar and a 3d printed enclosure I might have to look into this tbh
Idk if Bangle.js is open source, but I imagine a e-ink display could be possible?
Main problem will probably be battery life. At least if you want to do more than show the time on it.
Iirc there's a pine watch. Maybe it didn't have e-ink
I wish Eric had given us pebble v2 instead of beeper, honestly.
I got into Pebble last year, hahah. I have four now because I'm a weirdo (two Times, a Time Steel and a Round). Thank goodness for Rebble!
Hopefully you have better luck with the batteries than I did
The Garmin Instinct watches have an e-ink like display. I get about 25 days of battery on mine.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/775421
I have a Fossil Hybrid, it's perfect
Not sure if they are still available, but after pebble shut down, I got this Chinese watch called amazfit bip. It has a color e-ink display and lasts roughly a week on a full charge.
I was able to sync to my phone using FOSS called gadgetbridge so I didn't have to install sketchy Chinese software on my phone.
made me curious, so I decided to look it up. Is yours the original Bip?
Looks like the newer ones all have LCD screens and are more like the Fitbit versa.
Yeah it was the first one
Depending on what features you want/need, you can get a used Pebble on eBay and run Rebble on it. More hoops to jump through if you use an iPhone, but android support is pretty straightforward!
I have an old Sony eink one which still works and is perfect
SQFMI Watchy exists... And has a chinese supplier now which doesn't suck
The community is also active, recently a few from ground up firmwares have appeared
I was trying to find a link to a supplier, could you link?
Edit: found that it's on mouser, but also discovered they're using USB-Micro still, so that's going to have to be a pass :(
My github has a repo explaining it all, username is the same.
The seller on aliexpress will probably have in the future usbc version with cnc case
Your repo is very useful, thank you!
Man, I've been dying to get one ever since a friend told me about em.
While I can get them via Aliexpress, they come with a very minimal case, with the sides exposed. I'm struggling to find anyone selling replacement cases and I don't have access to a 3d printer to make one myself unfortunately.
I'll keep looking though.
Look up your local 3d printer community
I switched from a Pebble Time to a Gaemin Vivoactive 4s. I think it's as close to an eink smart watch as it gets.
Why do these phones always miss the mark?
Expand on that thought...
I'm just annoyed that they sell uncomplicated phones, but they are always hundreds of dollars. Just put an eink screen on a cheap SOC price around $40.
$40 is way too low. Economics of scale do not apply for such a niche product. $140-180 should be doable.
The problem is that e-ink is a patented technology and the patent owner charges insanely high royalties for using it in your product.
You can't even buy a standalone e-ink display panel for $40.
Their patent is expiring soon so prices will come down but that isn't the current market.
Making a product made to discourage usage is always going to fail. Palm phone had everyone excited because we wanted a good small phone. Instead they made an intentionally bad small phone and wondered why no one wanted it.
325$, how is that low-priced? I've never paid more then 200$ for a phone, I have an s20+ now.
For that price i can get second hand phone with higher specs & colorful screen
Yeah... It is low priced if you look at Apple or Samsung higher end or recent models.... otherwise yes it is expensive.
Man, I hope that takes off. Would be great to charge your phone every week or two.
Is anyone using one of the Hisense e-ink phones? How are they?
I could go get a new Motorola from Walmart for $69 right now.
The 69 dollar phone is a subsidized pre paid device. They plan on taking a loss on the sale and making it up with cell plans.
Also this is a niche device for a VERY niche audience. It will never be cheap cheap, just cheap for what it is.
Jokes on them, I use them as disposable GPS tracking devices.
Nice
Giggity.
If it came with a good terminal app I would be very tempted. I loved my blackberry and the old slide androids.
I'd get this if it has other messaging apps like Signal, and banking apps...seems like it has android so should be ok. Unfortunately I don't see it hitting the market realistically...
I wish I could get a tablet that is like the ReMarkable tablet with more storage (at least 64GB, storage is dirt cheap these days) or a MicroSD slot. I'm not paying $400 for a tablet with 8GB of storage in 2024. For comparison, you could buy 8TB of SSD storage for that price.
This is interesting but not quite what I want.
How long does the battery last? I think a week minimum and preferably a month it's what would be needed to make it worth it.
"several days"
So the same as most other modern phones under light use.
Not the same. E-ink displays only require power when you turn on the backlight or things change on the screen. The screen on time should be higher compared to regular LCD/OLED panels.
e-ink makes sense for like a book reader. But how often do you do that on a phone vs everything else.
Plus it's slow to update. This will not be a great experience for running Android.
It's a bizarre experiment, and the other specs are not very minimal at all, despite the name.
My Galaxy S3 lasted About a month one charge as alarm clock, until the battery gave out a few weeks ago. The Poco 1 lasts about a week, despite having more capacity. Standby power got worse the last 10 years.
That's because it's powering a much larger screen + possibly background stuff
Display is not used in standby and services is only core stuff. But that core stuff has gotten more and more.
I have an e-ink notebook. The low refresh rate is intolerable for doing anything like menus or text input.
I like the idea of a minimal phone but I think e-ink is a deal breaker for me, and I suspect most others.
Looks interesting, I wonder what kind of OS it's running.
It's running android 13 according to their Indiegogo page.
Oh, this looks even more interesting then. If it has an unlocked bootloader, I might actually consider it.
So it's not even out, but already outdated.
What's the point of a phone with worse display and worse specs, and that costs more than my £250 Motorola G73?
It's not a "worse" display. It's a different display. The only point is that if you want an e-ink phone (either for readability or battery life) this is one of the only options. Assuming it actually launches at least.
Would've preferred a version of this with a replaceable battery and no rear camera.