Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

I see a Google Play icon in their pictures. There's absolutely no way this thing could have the play store without a color screen, right? The pictures show a camera, what on earth are you doing with a camera strapped to an e-ink screen? This thing is baffling.

View on HN

AIUI the idea is you use a camera on a big e-ink device to take pictures of documents, whiteboards, note papers etc. In theory it sounds useful, in practice, eh, phone for everything (because camera is better, and you still want to have a way to drop stuff from your phone to the reader)

But on this thing?

How is color screen related to Google Play store at all? Try opening any website on an e-ink device and I can guarantee that the greyscale is good enough to let you understand what a picture is about. That's good enough for Play store (and many other apps).

I worked for a company making custom Android devices for industrial purposes. We weren't allowed to have the Play Store because we didn't have a front-facing camera. Google has a lot of (seemingly arbitrary) rules for Play eligibility, or at least they did back then.

I have a Boyue eInk eReader - that has the Play Store. I don't think there's anything in the Android certification which says a device has to have a colour screen.

My BOOX reader has the play store. Works fine. Not all apps work great on eink but most are serviceable (sometimes with some tweaks to the per-app UI settings on boox)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com