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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

  > They have been a terrible steward of the technology, limiting
  > themselves to a tiny fraction of the addressable market (ebook
  > readers) while shutting out a vast potential low power display
  > market by pricing their panels far too high.

I've often wondered if the E-ink management came from the pharmaceutical industry. They seem insistent on extracting the maximum dollar amount _per unit_ rather than maximizing revenue or making the technology available to those who would benefit from it.

I would pay any reasonable - and even a slightly unreasonable - price for a full E-ink phone, because I am a business user and do not care about consuming media. Likewise for a laptop or desktop screen. Yet they are all but unavailable!

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eInk smartphones, at least, are around: Hisense, Kingrow. Hisense just announced one with a color screen yesterday.

They are still very niche devices, though. Onyx made a similar thing back in 2013, but they never followed up because it didn't sell well.

FWIW, I do have a Kingrow K1, and I like it for what it is, which is a 5" Kindle that can also run the occasional Android app (like, say, OsmAnd or Kiwix). It's an excellent off-the-grid device due to battery life, which is precisely what I got it for. But for business use, I don't see much point - a dedicated business device to me would be something like Cosmo Communicator or Unihertz Titan.

You might like the Barnes and Noble Nook 3. It's a terribly underpowered eink book reader, but Android apps and a launcher can be easily installed. I use it for Ankidroid. It runs Android 4.4 (API 19 I believe) but many apps still support that version.

It doesn't have an SD card slot, on top of having little internal storage. This is a common problem with eInk readers, even though many do run Android - they either don't have an SD slot at all, or if they do, it's SDHC (and thus 32 Gb).

With K1, I have a 400 Gb card in there that's loaded with stuff - not only my entire Kindle library, but also Kiwix loaded with offline Wikipedia and a bunch of other wikis, OsmAnd topo maps etc. Between that, and several days of battery life with occasional use, it's perfect for multi-day hikes out in the boonies.

I'm really interested in the K1, but every review I've read says it's slow as molasses. Are they exaggerating or does it really feel bad to use?

In what sense? I haven't tried anything CPU-intensive on it, since there isn't much point with that kind of screen.

If you mean the screen refresh rate, it's typical eInk, comparable to Kindle. For tasks that require fast refresh, it's certainly not a pleasant device to use - e.g. scrolling around in maps is a bit tricky - but it's manageable.

Have you seen the Dasung Paperlike?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JIsX-qF6gQ

That just proves my point. $1200 for a 13" screen is five times the cost and one forth the surface area of my current screen. It should be the same surface area and double the cost.

It's an extremely young technology that only a tiny niche of people are even interested in. Your expectations are unreasonable.

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