Palma (and Kant) phone-style Eink

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Renate

Thanks! That's quite a lot of chip area on both sides. If they can fit it in a phone maybe we'll be seeing it more in the small ereaders.

I don't think so because:

OTOH, such heavy duty two sided construction must have some sort of price premium for design, manufacturing and yield.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If I wanted a phone sized Reader, I'd use my phone instead.

Or a €100 inc shipping Y-Ben P47L. Smaller than most phones. No touch, but nicer than Kindle K3.

[Renate]

Stop the presses!
A Firehose loader has just been found for the Hisense A9 Eink phone.
For many people the lack of a Firehose loader has been a bar.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804096737287.html
Yes, it is expensive-ish.

OTOH, it does include a "mysterious gift"!

Also, it has GPS, unlike the Palma.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Renate

Stop the presses!
A Firehose loader has just been found for the Hisense A9 Eink phone.
For many people the lack of a Firehose loader has been a bar.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804096737287.html
Yes, it is expensive-ish.

OTOH, it does include a "mysterious gift"!

Also, it has GPS, unlike the Palma.

What's a Firehose loader? Does this mean that a root is near?

[Renate]

Originally Posted by kandwo

What's a Firehose loader? Does this mean that a root is near?

Yes, it should 100% be the case.
But right now there is only one person trying this and they are having difficulties (some self-generated).

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Renate

Yes, it should 100% be the case.
But right now there is only one person trying this and they are having difficulties (some self-generated).

Maybe make a post about it on Reddit on r/eink to have more people try it out? I'd love to root my A9, but I'm not experienced enough to come up with the process myself. I managed to root my A5 Pro following some confusing instructions.

I'll follow the progress in the XDA thread, hoping to see some positive results soon

I'd still be tempted to buy a Palma, though. It seems to fix several problems I have with the A9: bad corpus (not really usable without the official case - too slippery, camera protrudes and the edges are too sharp), no SD card slot (I need this for audio content, mainly), glossy screen that requires the matte screen protector it came with (the Palma screen seems to be natively matte).

[Renate]

Originally Posted by kandwo

No SD card slot (I need this for audio content, mainly)...

Well, it is being sold with 128 GB.

What annoys me is that even the cheapest Qualcomm processor that Onyx puts in their devices has GPS/Galileo/Beidou/Glonass built right in.
You just need to add an antenna, which in the cheapest case is a sticker.
Why shouldn't an ereader have GPS? If you don't want it just keep location off.
I'm mainly thinking of hiking.

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Renate

Well, it is being sold with 128 GB.

What annoys me is that even the cheapest Qualcomm processor that Onyx puts in their devices has GPS/Galileo/Beidou/Glonass built right in.
You just need to add an antenna, which in the cheapest case is a sticker.
Why shouldn't an ereader have GPS? If you don't want it just keep location off.
I'm mainly thinking of hiking.

128 GB isn't nearly enough! Throw some music, podcasts and audio books in there and almost all of it is gone. I like having a lot of options for whenever I want to listen to something. And I like having it offline.

Re the GPS I can only agree. Another thing the A9 lacks is NFC, which I don't use myself, but I just don't understand why they wouldn't include it, especially since the A5 Pro has it. In fact A5 Pro has both NFC and an SD card slot.

This is something that plagues e-ink devices specifically. It seems like every new device is one step forwards, one step back and two steps in god knows what odd direction. Especially the devices from Onyx, unfortunately... They are the most promising player in the field, but make extremely questionable decisions at times.

For something like the Palma: include everything - SD card slot, GPS, NFC, SIM functionality, a camera. Maybe make a Palma light version without that. Otherwise airplane mode exists for people who don't want to use it as a phone.

[Renate]

I mentioned the Hisense A9, but they also make the Hisense Touch.
This appears to be about the same, but no cellular.
Both the A9 and the Touch have been hacked and rooted.
https://www.cect-shop.com/en/hisense...ic-reader.html

If the Palma reappears with GPS they may have a buyer.

[Renate]

The Palma just reappeared in https://shop.boox.com/.
Nope, no GPS. I guess that recertification would have been too much.
I might buy a Hisense A9. At least it is known to be rootable.

[readologist]

Palma now available on Amazon (same day delivery for the gray color if you have Prime.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by readologist

Palma now available on Amazon (same day delivery for the gray color if you have Prime.

I don't see anything on amazon.com beside screen protectors.

[readologist]

https://www.amazon.com/Moaan-inkPalm...p?ie=UTF8&th=1

[cellaris]

That's a Xiaomi device, not Onyx Boox.

[cosmicvoid]

Originally Posted by Renate

The Palma just reappeared in https://shop.boox.com/.
Nope, no GPS. I guess that recertification would have been too much.
I might buy a Hisense A9. At least it is known to be rootable.

I was a big disappointed that the Palma doesn't have a headphone jack, so I recently bought the Hisense A7 (non-CC) from Aliexpress (mostly just to tinker with). Should be here in a couple of weeks. In addition to the headphone jack, it's a bit larger than the Palma, and also has an SD card slot. Although it looks a bit involved, it sounds like it can be rooted.