You can find official jd.com links on https://ereaderx.com/product/hisense-a9-eink-phone-specs/ use your favorite proxy, I use superbuy but I won't link because this is not a spam post. Notably it's 266.70 USD from JD this sus website wants 479.99 for the same... shipping will add a little but certainly not even half the difference.
Anyone considering buying this phone in the US should probably not do so because it has no support for UTMS aka 3G (still common in rural areas), does not support any of the 4G "long range" bands, and no 5G support (an increasing number of rural cell towers are long-range 5G)
It does support the majority of non-extended-range Tmobile bands. I did not check other carriers, but this thing is much worse than a Nexus 6 in terms of LTE band support - a phone that came out about 8-9 years ago.
I just started using this phone a couple weeks ago. It runs android 11, and the Ink OS that is runs is actually pretty clean and simple. I use Mint Mobile as my provider since TMobile is the only carrier that really supports it in the US. I am located in NYC and while the phone's coverage isn't like my older iPhone's its still pretty good. You can also get it off AliExpress for about $360 (At least I was able to). Not quite sure if it can use Android auto yet.
Overall I have had a good experience using the phone. My goal was to reduce my daily eye strain while not giving up the phone essentials, and it has certainly helped me do that.
that's a bummer.
There is a killer new feature on android 12 that allows neostore (F-droid frontend) that allows apps to auto update without me having to remember to manually update them.
If you are in the market for a current state of the art e-ink phone, would having to do a few taps a month genuinely stop you buying this model? Seems like a very minor inconvenience for someone who values an esoteric technology combination.
If you look into other Android E-ink devices they all run Android 11. I can't find where I saw it now, but I looked into it when I bought a Onyx Boox device and it apparently had something to do with the driver blobs for the screen not supporting Android 12 and higher.
Is that really an android 12 feature? F-droid Basic (almost the same app, same dev, same looks, without fancy direct sharing options; you can actually get it via old f-droid) can do that as well. They had to rewrite their implementation of how apps are installed, it took a while. With that only first install of the app needs confirmation.
I don't know about NFC, but until this moment I just assumed GPS was built in to any (qualcomm) soc that also integrated cellular. Or was it bt/wifi? It piggybacks some other antenna and hence 'just works'.
Going eink helped me cut back video content. But I ended up listening to more podcast at faster speeds and since i have youtube premium, backgorund listening. It's... better, since I treat it as background noise and ears don't get fatigued / strained like eyes do.
Kobo is notorious for having atrocious response time. I'm on my third generation of Kobo reader and it's still dogshit slow.
The periodic crashes are also really tiresome - I regularly have to hard-power-cycle the thing and often lose my reading progress. Why this has been a problem for 6+ years is beyond me but my guess is that they're spending very little on R&D/QA, running on an ancient SoC.
I will check in a few days if it can run android auto and update here. To be honest, it probably has a lot of junk-ware on it, this really isn't my domain of expertise though. I can tell you from a user experience, it has been very easy to use.
It's a shame Sharps MIP-LCDs haven't been scaled up to phone or tablet sizes, those could be a nice balance with almost the power efficiency and comfort of e-ink but with fast enough response times to keep up with animation and smooth scrolling UIs. That's the screen technology the Pebble smartwatches used, and the Playdate console more recently.
Fully agree, in this race of "2000 NIT ULTRA BRIGHT OLED FOR DAYLIGHT!!!" screens, transflective displays make sunlight seem like a gift. My previous smartwatch (Amazfit Bip) had one and it's a real pity no one bothers too much with them.
Garmin still uses MIP-LCD on a lot of their smartwatches, though even they have started offering more OLED variants which trade battery life and sunlight readability for better aesthetics.
The YotaPhone did something similar back in 2012, I'm surprised it took this long for someone else to try it again. IIRC they had oodles of crowdfunding support but fumbled the logistics side of things.
The only downside is that, on some maps, the grey-water is the same as the grey-road and it happened a few times that I thought a canal was a road when doing bike trip.
Google Maps is working but sometimes loosing the position, probably due to the fact there are no Google services on the smartphone. So Google Maps is very unreliable. It may loose positioning in the middle of a trip (suddenly, position is not updated anymore).
Well, really good to degooglize yourself ;-)
Never tried Spotify nor Waze nor Telegram.
Whatsapp was working if I remember well but I’ve deleted my account year ago. Signal is working fine except for notifications which are sometimes held until you launch the app. This doesn’t happen all the time, I suspect the aggressive battery "freezer".
For me, it is a feature as I’m disturbed less (the phone is in silence mode most of the time anyway). If I expect a message, I simply open Signal before locking the screen.
Note: there’s a way to forbid freezing for specific applications if needed. I just didn’t wanted to do it.
Battery life was about a week and is now about 3 days but it really depends on which apps you want to "freeze" and which apps you never want to "freeze" (to receive notifications).
There’s also a "super saving mode" which allows only 6 apps, no notifications. I use it during long bikepacking trips, recharging every other day when stoping for lunch in a restaurant. It is great. Also, I leave the "super saving mode" if I need to use another app.
So it is perfectly possible to get very long battery time but you need to really configure it and figure out how to use it.
I’ve lost a lot a battery time by disabling freeze for Adguard VPN. In day to day use, I prefer to use more battery and send less data to China (the stuff is full of spyware). Even with that, I charge it every three days but I don’t use it much (which is the goal)
Is there a way to mimic the experience on a "normal" android phone? Making everything b/w with monochrome setting is easy. But reducing framerate and maybe also reducing resolution? Maybe even put a filter over it? Anybody tried that?
You can reduce render resolution easily, it's available as the unrooted ABD command `adb shell wm size 1080x1920`. You don't need a computer for it either, you can use an app like Bugjaeger to create a loopback connection on most Wi-Fi networks.
It's really not the same. Eink is a completely different screen technology that physically moves ink particles around. The screen doesn't emit light, only reflects ambient light like paper.
The point is to reduce your desire to watch addictive videos, not to do something with display technology per se. I actually considered that a startup idea - Android fork targeted to restrain addictive content consumption via artificially lowered refresh rates, some color filters and targeted software.
Is this new? Because the product I saw like this before wasn't actually phone because it didn't take a SIM, was basically like Apple's old iPod Touch. And I don't see any copy in here about GSM bands, SIM tray, etc. Is the "news" here just that they now support Google Play?
I would jump at something like this in a second if it a) took a SIM and b) can run Android Auto for when I'm on the road.
EDIT: it helps to actually read, the copy does say : Cellular: 4G/LTE
Looks like the Android version here is pretty old, so I'd be worried about the viability of b).
Readit News
There's no such thing as Hisense A9 Pro. It's just A9.
The site has zero contact information, you have no idea who you are buying it from.
Buyer beware!
https://reddit.com/r/eink/comments/17oc6jq/httpshisenseeinkc...
You can find official jd.com links on https://ereaderx.com/product/hisense-a9-eink-phone-specs/ use your favorite proxy, I use superbuy but I won't link because this is not a spam post. Notably it's 266.70 USD from JD this sus website wants 479.99 for the same... shipping will add a little but certainly not even half the difference.
Nevermind, I confused HiSense and Huawei's HiSilicon :(
With that said, HiSense is more of a white box OEM outside Asia, so maybe this is them trying a new thing with direct sales to West?
It does support the majority of non-extended-range Tmobile bands. I did not check other carriers, but this thing is much worse than a Nexus 6 in terms of LTE band support - a phone that came out about 8-9 years ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39266008
Overall I have had a good experience using the phone. My goal was to reduce my daily eye strain while not giving up the phone essentials, and it has certainly helped me do that.
that's a bummer. There is a killer new feature on android 12 that allows neostore (F-droid frontend) that allows apps to auto update without me having to remember to manually update them.
https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Store
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/
If you have any other recommendations, I'd gladly hear them.
The periodic crashes are also really tiresome - I regularly have to hard-power-cycle the thing and often lose my reading progress. Why this has been a problem for 6+ years is beyond me but my guess is that they're spending very little on R&D/QA, running on an ancient SoC.
It's expected that E-ink would demolish video quality, but does it has an incidence on sound if you want to listen to a video on the metro line?
Does it have a lot of Chinese junk-ware on it, though?
https://hisenseeink.com/products/hisense-a6l-64-128-gb
https://ploum.net/se-passer-decran-avec-un-telephone-e-ink/i...
Ask Me Anything about not having a true screen on your phone.
And chatting apps like Telegram and Whastap ?
The only downside is that, on some maps, the grey-water is the same as the grey-road and it happened a few times that I thought a canal was a road when doing bike trip.
Google Maps is working but sometimes loosing the position, probably due to the fact there are no Google services on the smartphone. So Google Maps is very unreliable. It may loose positioning in the middle of a trip (suddenly, position is not updated anymore).
Well, really good to degooglize yourself ;-)
Never tried Spotify nor Waze nor Telegram.
Whatsapp was working if I remember well but I’ve deleted my account year ago. Signal is working fine except for notifications which are sometimes held until you launch the app. This doesn’t happen all the time, I suspect the aggressive battery "freezer".
For me, it is a feature as I’m disturbed less (the phone is in silence mode most of the time anyway). If I expect a message, I simply open Signal before locking the screen.
Note: there’s a way to forbid freezing for specific applications if needed. I just didn’t wanted to do it.
Using signal has not been always easy. See : https://ploum.net/2023-03-09-losing-signal.html
There’s also a "super saving mode" which allows only 6 apps, no notifications. I use it during long bikepacking trips, recharging every other day when stoping for lunch in a restaurant. It is great. Also, I leave the "super saving mode" if I need to use another app.
So it is perfectly possible to get very long battery time but you need to really configure it and figure out how to use it.
I’ve lost a lot a battery time by disabling freeze for Adguard VPN. In day to day use, I prefer to use more battery and send less data to China (the stuff is full of spyware). Even with that, I charge it every three days but I don’t use it much (which is the goal)
I would jump at something like this in a second if it a) took a SIM and b) can run Android Auto for when I'm on the road.
EDIT: it helps to actually read, the copy does say : Cellular: 4G/LTE
Looks like the Android version here is pretty old, so I'd be worried about the viability of b).
https://hisenseeink.com/products/hisense-touch-lite-e-ink-mu...