Phone-sized ereader with koreader support

[memento]

Hi,

I would like to buy a phone-sized ereader that fits into my pockets to make it easier to read books instead of scrolling on my phone. I only use KOReader and sideload books.

Some options I've considered:

Boox Palma 1 and 2. Somewhat expensive, spyware, generally a bit unnecessary in hardware specs.

Inkpalm 5/plus/pro. Not sure which model does what. Looks not significantly cheaper. Unsure if KOReader is well supported. The aspect ratio of the plus also seems off.

Hisense devices. Seems unsupported by KOReader. I don't need a phone in any case.

Any thoughts?

[Aleron Ives]

If you keep the Palma offline and sideload everything, then the OS will never be able to phone home. Most small e-readers don't use the smartphone form factor, so your options are limited if you require that particular size and shape.

[kandwo]

Well, if the Boox reader is spyware, then so is everything else in that category. They are all Android readers.

If it's important not to use spyware, your best choice would be buying a Hisense A9 and install the Google free LineageOS 21 ROM from the rooting thread over at XDA. (You could also check out the HisenseA9 subreddit.)

[memento]

The Hisense A9 is far too expensive for me. Keeping the Palma offline seems to be a better solution. Is the difference between the 1st and 2nd generation worth the price difference?

[Gormagon]

Every Android or IOS device is spying on you. Although you can deactivate quite a few system apps on Android with adb. And if the OS isn't spying on you then some apps will do.

Since you asked for "a phone-sized ereader" and not explicitly for an e-ink device I can recommand TCL NXTPAPER phones. If you won't use it as a phone, the older TCL 40 NXTPAPER will do quite nicely. Koreader runs as app without problem and the matte screen is great. My e-ink devices have more reflections than the TCL-screen. The TCL 40 NXTPAPER is available at around 150 Euro e.g. on amazon.de right now.
You can switch the normal colour screen to a b/w screen (or a more paperlike colour screen) quite easily on the TCL 40 using the drop down menu and clicking on "NXTPAPER MODE".
Since the NXTPAPER screen is no e-ink screen it has no ghosting, no annoying refresh and colours look like one would expect them to look like (e.g. they are not washed out).

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Gormagon

You can switch the normal colour screen to a b/w screen (or a more paperlike colour screen) quite easily on the TCL 40 using the drop down menu and clicking on "NXTPAPER MODE".
Since the NXTPAPER screen is no e-ink screen it has no ghosting, no annoying refresh and colours look like one would expect them to look like (e.g. they are not washed out).

I found the Nxtpaper & Mono modes to be a gimmick. Simply having sRGB, a nice theme, tweak colour balance and have manual brightness indoors worked best. Though the Nxtpaper 3.0 based Nxtpaper 14 realistically can imitate the color Onyx Boox I saw.

The NxtPaper 40 gets better reviews than Nxtpaper 50 (main difference is extra phone RF bands).

I have the Nxtpaper 40 phone and it's better to read on than my Sony PRS-350 5″ eink or the very limited P47L (no touch and phone shape 4.7″ elongated screen with buttons). So I gave away the P47L and have abandoned buying a new battery for the Sony.

It's also got massive battery life if not online or video. My phone settings / SIM is set to calls/SMS only, even background data disabled. About 19% brightness indoors, auto outdoors. WiFi & BT normally off. Also good for music or audio books or TTS (pocketbook) as it has BT and 3.5mm jack. Better life than eink android playing music.

I paid under €200 inc shipping and VAT.

The good eink models are only better than Nxtpaper 2.0 or Nxtpaper 3.0 if the ambient light is good enough to have your front light off.

I have a Nxtpaper 11 for Pen notes (full Nebo) and the Nxtpaper 3.0 screened Nxtpaper 14 (14.25″) for big stuff). NxtPaper 40 mysteriously also supports Nebo with finger or dumb phone stylus and on their web (My Write for Nebo) site it's the only device without built-in digitiser (Wacom, USI 2.0, MS/NPP, Apple etc) supported by Nebo. But I use Google's Gboard to to finger/stylus writing (off line) to real time text in an ordinary text editor for notes. Be sure to change all the defaults in Gboard.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by memento

The Hisense A9 is far too expensive for me. Keeping the Palma offline seems to be a better solution. Is the difference between the 1st and 2nd generation worth the price difference?

Probably not. The second gen. adds a fingerprint reader and a slightly improved CPU. But considering that the 1st gen is already overpowered for an e-reader it probably wouldn't be that noticeable.

Beware that the white version uses a plastic screen that easily gets scratched. Both versions also might have a bug where using the volume down button for page turning results in multiple page turns on a single press (unsure if this is hardware or software related).

[Aleron Ives]

It's also worth noting that both versions use BSR, so you'll get much worse battery life than with a device that refreshes the screen normally. AFAIK the Note Air 4C is the first BSR device to have good battery life, but it's not clear yet whether that's due to hardware changes or to software changes that can be rolled out on older devices.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

It's also worth noting that both versions use BSR, so you'll get much worse battery life than with a device that refreshes the screen normally. AFAIK the Note Air 4C is the first BSR device to have good battery life, but it's not clear yet whether that's due to hardware changes or to software changes that can be rolled out on older devices.

What's wrong with the Palma's battery life? It has great standby battery life and if you just read on it it's not bad at all. Of course, surfing the web will drain it faster, as will listening to audio over bluetooth or something, but that has nothing to do with BSR.

[ottischwenk]

If you want to save power with a BSR device, you just need to set it to HD - but then what do you have a BSR device for?

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by kandwo

What's wrong with the Palma's battery life?

Hmm... the battery life wasn't as bad as I remembered:

https://youtu.be/xsJY-YkcbUY?t=1652

If you use the frontlight it's not bad, but the Page performs 50% better without the frontlight. I wish Voja had older devices in the list, as I'm pretty sure the earlier Poke models had amazing battery life, and the Poke 5 was a curious slouch in that regard.