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Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

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Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#141

Post by mackrevinack »

SoftTalker wrote: post #93
daxfohl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, or charge every night, or look for when you're in a hurry to get out the door, etc. Or buy, for that matter. Probably what I'd rather have is a phone that has a low power low function mode, that I can configure what apps are available, and then a regular mode where everything is available. But to get to it, I need to convince a LLM equivalent of Seinfeld's soup nazi why I need it.

Yeah a phone with an easy toggle between "dumb" and "smart" would be handy, especially if "dumb" mode had greatly increased battery life, but I don't think it would appeal to enough people to motivate making one.

or something like the yotaphone where it has an eink screen on the back. the specs were always pretty awful though

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#142

Post by dotancohen »

lostmsu wrote: post #134
dotancohen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been experimenting with greyscale on my Android phone, it is nowhere near the comfort level of real E-Ink.

How did you do that?

On Samsung devices, there's is an option under the Accessibility menu. Then go to something like "Improve Display" (mine is in Hebrew, so that is a rough translation that might not be exact) and then "Customize Colours" (again, rough translation).

Additionally, I believe that there exists an additional method to enable greyscale in Developer Options if you have that enabled.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#143

Post by AlecSchueler »

samatman wrote: post #120
AlecSchueler wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems like it's better to grab an iPhone 12, set the screen to greysfale in the accessibility settings, and then turn on screen time to block social media apps and other distractions. Better to use rsync than bother with Dropbox?

This phone is not the next Dropbox.

No, but buying a product that does everything for you and ensures that you don't just turn distractions back on is the entire value of the product.

Saying "but you can just x and y" misses the point of what's being brought to market.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#144

Post by bengale »

dotancohen wrote: post #86
bengale wrote: post #46

You can do a lot of this on an iPhone if you use focus modes and automations. I have a deep work mode that sets a blank Home Screen, turns off always on display, sets the phone to greyscale and only allows notifications from my wife. It feels like something like this gets you most of the way there and you can then have different focus levels that ramp up potential distractions. All without carrying two devices or giv…

I've been experimenting with greyscale on my Android phone, it is nowhere near the comfort level of real E-Ink.

Yeah I don’t disagree. But on the whole I think it gets you a long way towards it without the cons of having two devices for example.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#145

Post by bengale »

MBCook wrote: post #121
bengale wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the greyscale needs a shortcut automation.

Oh I didn’t catch that part. It makes sense that wouldn’t be available by default as a focus option.

There are a few system options in focus states but not this. I’d like to see them expand it for more of these low distraction techniques.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#146

Post by hislaziness »

I have experience using the Motofone - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone . It was not the best of experience especially due to the lag which many have mentioned here. E-Ink displays have come a long way, hoping this time it is a better experience.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#147

Post by garaetjjte »

MBCook wrote: post #76
seam_carver wrote: post #32

I recorded a video of another e ink phone running many common Android apps really well (in direct sunlight)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvO9ScTdwz8 It's the Hisense A9 with a beautiful and fast Carta 1200 e ink display. It's very capable, I would have preferred a phone more like that instead. It's biggest drawback is terrible USA cell reception. This company was initially going to make a phone like this but appa…

Unfortunately this confirms my fear. I think I’d want to throw an e-ink phone against a wall after a while from frustration with the lag. E-ink screen refreshes are just far too slow for something interactive. That’s one of the reasons they work great on e-readers. I wondered if they were doing something special or had a different kind of e-ink screen that was faster in trade for some other property but at least the…

Apparently with better controller they can refresh faster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XduK7wn9SE4

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#148

Post by btbuildem »

bengale wrote: post #77
btbuildem wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you share how you set that up? Sounds effective.

Most of it is just in focus modes settings: alerts, notifications and things like that. For greyscale you use shortcuts. There’s an automation tab, you set up on a focus mode being enabled then “set color filters on” and then the opposite for that focus mode being disabled.

Good to know! Thanks for sharing.

Re: Minimal phone gets back to basics with E Ink display and real keyboard

#150

Post by seam_carver »

MBCook wrote: post #76
seam_carver wrote: post #32

I recorded a video of another e ink phone running many common Android apps really well (in direct sunlight)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvO9ScTdwz8 It's the Hisense A9 with a beautiful and fast Carta 1200 e ink display. It's very capable, I would have preferred a phone more like that instead. It's biggest drawback is terrible USA cell reception. This company was initially going to make a phone like this but appa…

Unfortunately this confirms my fear. I think I’d want to throw an e-ink phone against a wall after a while from frustration with the lag. E-ink screen refreshes are just far too slow for something interactive. That’s one of the reasons they work great on e-readers. I wondered if they were doing something special or had a different kind of e-ink screen that was faster in trade for some other property but at least the…

As background information I used the slowest clear mode in the beginning of the video for Kindle/Koreader. I used a faster mode for the rest of the video. There’s also a speed mode intended for video but ghosting is really apparent on speed mode. The mode is set per-app.
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