Best E-Ink Phone: Minimal Phone, Bigme Hibreak Pro, Mudita Kompakt or Hisense A9

Review of the disaster kings. All of them have quite poor spec. Shouldn't flash the OS of a phone if you're reviewing it.

Would have been nice to include the prices for each of the phones. The review feels incomplete without that

If we flash LineageOS on Hisense A9, will the banking apps still work?

Can /e/OS be installed on (one of) them?

My Hisense A9 wins!!!! Kkkkk
Sometimes I miss the colours, but it is great

Would you know, can you get Google services onto the Kompakt? I could only use it if it worked with uber, Google maps

If only one had pen compatibility. Would make it a perfect notepad.

Awesome overview, just wish they would take this exact formfactor without any of the phone parts. I just want an affordable small reader :')

I'm really interested in the progress being made by the bigme community custom ROM for the Hibreak Pro. I do worry that it may oversell, however. bigme seems to be constantly improving its refresh technology, and it is trying to make things more stable - most recent release brings some good improvements.

So, I wonder what the average user's best option is with the Hibreak Pro. Stick with Bigme stock and hope they continue with meaningful updates, or put your money on a custom ROM which may not have as good refresh or battery life, but more stability in certain sections... Tough one...

I looked for such a comparison for eternity. Thank you for this unbiased, factual video on this topic. Subbed to the channel :)

HIBREAK PRO WIN

I won't be purchasing an e-ink phone, but the tech is fascinating to me. Thanks for the overview.

brilliant video mate

I am still waiting for your review of the Boox Go Color 7 (Gen 2)!

I'm still not decided, as also the new TCL Nxtpaper 60XE might be an option. I can have it from Canada in June without any import fees. So far I just miss a review from true E-Ink expert ;)

Imagine building a phone with software so bad that another phone with custom software someone built in his free time is considered better (also the Hisense is 5 years old now)
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Bigme revived the category and really hope they will get huge success after fixing their problems

I would say the muditas UI is the best, because its nothing there really. The UI in the apps included themselves are a bit so so and not very coherent sadly. So polished... nah. What does it have. No notifications. A stands list based settings menu. A lock screen with a clock. A home screen with and icon grid you cant set app order or anything with. And a control center... that actually is the best. and its a total copy of apples one. Also it has the less available settings to just that makes it the cleanest. And then the apps themselves as said is all over the place with different button positions, style, naming etc... The unfinished feeling I got from the UI is actually what made me return it.

I guess the always on options is tied to the frontlight? As otherwise the e ink device do not train any more battery at all if the screen displays something or not. I mean its an e ink screen

As cool as the Mudita looks, I just can't wrap my head around buying an extremely locked-down phone with Android TWELVE! I'd have to switch from Signal and other messenger apps to SMS, can't use e-Banking anymore, forget two-factor Apps or other useful, essential tools. Don't understand who's the target audience for this. Senior citizens and people who only phone and SMS? It's cool that you can sideload apps, you'll still be stuck with a four year old OS. But I love the form-factor.
Curiosly waiting for my Minimal Phone, hehe.

Im hoping boox breaks into this market with their generic Wacom equivalent and a smaller pencil. great video as always!

WARNING - I ordered 2 Minimal Phones through their Indiegogo and NEITHER came. This has happened to a lot of people.

I feel like they need like 2-3 more years and they will be worth getting.

I really appreciate the highlight summary

There seems to be a company called Goodisplay, which looks to be a new (?) eink panel manufacturer. But it's possible that their panels only produce 4 greyscales (which I conclude from what I write a couple lines further), so should be visible at some point if the minimal phones panel could be from them.
Funny sidenote (while bad for the user itself): a user on r/ereader bought an ereader with a panel from this company. It was stated on the packaging to have 4 greyscales. The reason why the user came to the subreddit was because the panel at the end produced only white and black - so either the device had a bug in the software or the company who made it was somewhat incompetent.
The ereader device on the users posted pictures is an Android ereader called TAB 5 from a company called temi, and it has indeed printed 4-STEPS GREY SCALE on the box. The posted picture of a book cover looked indeed awful because it was for real just black and white, nothing in between. So possibly the worst ereader device in existence - although for reading itself it at least seemed to be fine.