Apple would upcharge for it, and make the battery life lower in software so you didnt buy it over their flagship.

Hmm.. might be for me, I absolutely despise trying to type an email on a phone screen. Using my wife's 2nd gen kindle back when we got stuck in Tokyo with a non-activated Verizon rental phone wasnt too bad.

That too!

Obligatory link to the Technology Connections video on e-ink:

https://youtu.be/dhRgw0HfrYU

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Add a robust standing podcast app and I'm in!

Only 599. Stand sold separately for 199.

Right, so sit the phone on your screen(laptop). To each their own I guess. Just spotting a possible use case; I don’t believe there’s anything wrong with that.

Let's be real, y'all would buy an apple dildo if they made one.

What ever happened to color E ink displays? My watch, Pebble time had it and it had animations that were miles smoother than a traditional e ink black and white display.

Also Pebble time will be one of the GOAT in smartwatches. RIP.

Yes I did see that a couple years ago, you could even set designs on the back with the E-ink because it never used power when idle so made a cool way of using and demonstrating the tech

There was actually a phone that came out a long time ago (I think it was called the yotophone) that had a normal screen on the front, and en e-ink screen on the back. It was pretty neat and allowed you to customize the look of the back of your phone.

Thats true, and thats one of the reasons we have less and less battery life, hence, if an E-ink display can give me days of battery life I would absolutely take that, even if it gives me less “features “.

There has been a similar product for a few years called https://www.inkcase.com/ which just adds an e-ink second screen to the back on an iphone.

Those old Nokias and blackberries had CPU’s that are, in all honesty, more comparable to graphing calculator CPU’s than what’s in our current smartphones. They also didn’t generally need to maintain a connection to multiple different types of cellular networks like modern phones do.

I would love to have this as a work phone.

They wouldn't. It would be a secondary e-reader that fits in their pocket. Keep in mind that these androids with e-ink (boox, mobiscribe, etc) only run about 10-20 android apps made for the device. You can sideload normal android apps but they are not very usable.

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For a great example of Android on e-ink, look at the mobiscribe. I've used it daily for years. It's a companion to my smartphone, not a replacement. I got excited as the prospect of a pocket-sized version, but was very disappointed to discover they didn't include stylus support here. So, I'm still waiting on that pocket sized version. For a big version, consider boox. There's also Remarkable and Amazon Scribe but I believe those run Linux without Android.

Few years ago, they offered two e-ink phones. One was similar to this pro version but also included camera. The second one had I think IPS on the front and e-ink on the back.

I really want smart watches to use E ink instead of OLED. It would increase the battery life immeasurably which is my biggest complaint about smart watches.

Same here. Totally agree.

I happen to have Hisense A5 pro CC with color e-ink, for more than a year now. Using it as a normal phone. Screen refresh set on "speed" and the colors make apps very usable but it's tradeoff between speed and quality. I read on my phone mostly, or listen to music on spotify. It doesn't tempt me to spend more time scrolling socials or watching youtube because videos are looking terrible to scary sometimes. But it is perfectly readable in bright environments, it works great as gps. Also the eyestrain is minimized as you don't need backlight. And the batery life. Charging once in 4-5 days of my use. I hope there will be some e-ink phones in the future when this one breaks down.

Is that really the first thing that comes to mind? What proctored test doesn’t check for electronics/phones? All the tests I’ve taken in the last 5 years have had eye tracking to make sure I’m not looking too off of the screen.

Imagine a mobile phone that:

has the power draw of today's chips, but using the old speed (I dunno, 32 mhz?) - same performance, lower power draw, smaller size

has the same battery size as today's phones (more effective battery than the old ones)

has an e-ink display (much better battery life; pretty sure even the passive matrix displays or whatever they were called were less efficient than today's e-ink)

uses only what is needed for calls in terms of radio (no drain from connecting to gps, wifi, 5g, etc. Just regular gsm)

Screen size still tiny (unless there's barely any power draw difference between a 1 inch screen and 4 inch screen on an e-ink)

I dunno if digitizers take a lot of energy, but physical keyboard would be awesome

Anyway, point is, I'd imagine this would be like crazy effective. Even throwing a contemporary battery into an old Nokia would probably make it last like, I dunno, 5x longer. And that's just one change.