MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - An Android e-ink reader with good battery life?

OneiroDancer · 06-23-2021, 07:19 AM

I'd like to try an android e-ink device to use mainly for reading, so that I can use Moon Reader, a wide set of dictionaries, occasionally download books directly from the reader, play with Calibre companion, read articles and wikipedia... consider it as an experiment, inspired by the fact that I am currently reading a book on my phone, since at first I couldn't put it on my Kobo Clara HD because I was on the go without a PC, and then I was caught by the much better dictionaries I could easily access.

Just to prevent some ranting: of course I know that it wouldn't be a tablet and many apps would be unusable due to refresh rate: I know and I don't care, I am only interested in reading, accessing dictionaries, taking notes, occasionally browsing the web, in short all thing related to text. The main limitation would therefore be battery life, but I would expect that in a device correctly configured and with network connections only turned on when needed it may be not much worse than those of dedicated e-readers. That's the theory, anyway: it remains to see if such devices exists. Do they?

Of course, I would aim for a reasonably recent version of Android, so that I could try recent applications and look forward to a few years of usage before obsolescense. And to a small size, let's say 6 inches of screen size and 7 inches of physical size – like my current Clara HD.

The Onyx Poke 3 looks decent, but I am not sure how good battery life is. The Tolino shine 3 and vision 4 claim a battery life of a few weeks, but I am not sure how difficult they are to customize as I want them, and what effect would that have on battery life.

Given my requirements, can you recommend one of these readers? Do you have others to suggest?

06-23-2021, 07:19 AM	#1
OneiroDancer Enthusiast Posts: 45 Karma: 2148536 Join Date: Jul 2015 Device: Onyx Poke 3, Kobo Clara HD	An Android e-ink reader with good battery life? I'd like to try an android e-ink device to use mainly for reading, so that I can use Moon Reader, a wide set of dictionaries, occasionally download books directly from the reader, play with Calibre companion, read articles and wikipedia... consider it as an experiment, inspired by the fact that I am currently reading a book on my phone, since at first I couldn't put it on my Kobo Clara HD because I was on the go without a PC, and then I was caught by the much better dictionaries I could easily access. Just to prevent some ranting: of course I know that it wouldn't be a tablet and many apps would be unusable due to refresh rate: I know and I don't care, I am only interested in reading, accessing dictionaries, taking notes, occasionally browsing the web, in short all thing related to text. The main limitation would therefore be battery life, but I would expect that in a device correctly configured and with network connections only turned on when needed it may be not much worse than those of dedicated e-readers. That's the theory, anyway: it remains to see if such devices exists. Do they? Of course, I would aim for a reasonably recent version of Android, so that I could try recent applications and look forward to a few years of usage before obsolescense. And to a small size, let's say 6 inches of screen size and 7 inches of physical size – like my current Clara HD. The Onyx Poke 3 looks decent, but I am not sure how good battery life is. The Tolino shine 3 and vision 4 claim a battery life of a few weeks, but I am not sure how difficult they are to customize as I want them, and what effect would that have on battery life. Given my requirements, can you recommend one of these readers? Do you have others to suggest? Last edited by OneiroDancer; 06-23-2021 at 08:42 AM.