They are extremely fragile, due to the glass substrate. There are flexible e-Ink screens but you don't find them in consumer devices. (
http://www.eink.com/flexible-technology.html ). It's probably fair to say it's the biggest weakness of this technology.
Amazon countered this weakness by having a very generous replacement policy. It resulted in blog posts
like this one and in turn a huge advertizement for their eReaders.
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I've been using AI reader for android for some time now and the software is far superior to the Kobo's software, both in smoothness of operation and actual options.
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Android offers a very nice environment for all sorts of apps but they all rely on displays that update in real time. There have been eInk devices using Android in the past and they pretty much all sucked, so unfortunately moving to the Android platform does not solve software issues at all. All those smooth animations, color highlights and subtle hints that android does on smartphones - would kill the experience completely on eInk.
Slow response time of the display is the second biggest weakness of the technology. No matter which software, with an eInk display it will just feel sluggish to the extreme. Acceptable when you're just flipping pages, but going through interactive menus, and PDF panning/zooming etc. is a chore.
For reading with an Android device, my favorite is the AMOLED display you find in Samsung and other devices. If you can get used to nightmode reading (white text, black background), this is great on OLEDs because black pixels are really off so - just like eInk, there is no backlight. And the brightness of the text can be adjusted (reducing overall display brightness, and by using some shade of grey color instead of fullbright white).
The only thing that doesn't work and remains eInk territory is reading outdoors / sunlight on the beach.
Now, smartphones and tablets are also fragile but it's more obvious so as the glass is in the front, not hidden inside the device, and for some models in the event of breakage, it can be replaced independent of the display unit itself.