Before you get excited, it’s an IndieGoGo project.
The one and only time I bought into a project on Indiegogo was for a phone that said it was shipping that month, even though the company had been delaying it for a year already (unbeknownst to me) and they had no idea when they were going to finish. It was straight up fraud, Indiegogo let the company do it without consequence, and 2.5 years later the project is still up on Indiegogo. Now I’m out $800, and the asshole company is still claiming they’ll send all the backers their phones any day now. They’ve been literally saying it for years.
Don’t learn the hard way like I had to. Never back an Indiegogo project.
Isn’t indiegogo just like Kickstarter? There’s never a guarantee you’ll ever get the thing you back.
I am not certain of the differences between Kickstarter and Indiegogo. You’re right that there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the items you backed, but in my case, the company making the phone was straight up lying about their progress and release schedule, and not just having poor judgment about timelines, but actually committing fraud, and Indiegogo took no action against them when hundreds of backers brought it to their attention.
Aww shucks I was actually a bit interested
Is there something in particular about Indiegogo that I missed, or are you just pointing out it’s crowd funded? (and that means you could lose your money without anything in return)
Probably the chances of them never delivering being more than 0
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Yeah, it was just the crowd funding aspect. I’ve never used Indie GoGo.
So it goes well with my Cicret bracelet
I’m not disinterested, though $350 is a little steep ($450 if you’re not an ‘early bird’). Ideally it would be bootloader unlockable and rootable as well. I would probably use it like a PDA of old.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-minimal-phone-first-e-ink-qwerty-phone#/
Preliminary Specs:
- CPU: MTK 6769
- RAM: 4GB
- Storage: 128GB
- OS: Android 13
- Display: 3.5” E-Ink Touch / 300 PPI / High Refresh Rate
- Front Camera: 8MP
- Rear Camera: 16MP
- WIFI: 802.11 a / b / g / n 2.4GHz / 5GHz WiFi Direct，WiFi，B 4.1
- AT＆T: YES
- T-Mobile: YES
- Verizon: YES
- Battery: 4000mAh QC 18W Wireless charge less than 20W
- Features: QWERTY keyboard, NFC, GPS, A-GPS, Fingerprint (side), Face unlock, G sensor, Compass, Gyroscope, Proximity, Light sensor
I looked into E-ink displays this summer and the tech is just so high priced
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The phone still has a 3D printed shell in the video. Doesn’t look promising.
Man, what I really want is a e-ink smart watch…
RIP in peace Pebble
I wonder how hard it would be to open source something similar with something like an nrf52 or similar and a 3d printed enclosure I might have to look into this tbh
Main problem will probably be battery life. At least if you want to do more than show the time on it.
Idk if Bangle.js is open source, but I imagine a e-ink display could be possible?
Iirc there’s a pine watch. Maybe it didn’t have e-ink
I got into Pebble last year, hahah. I have four now because I’m a weirdo (two Times, a Time Steel and a Round). Thank goodness for Rebble!
Hopefully you have better luck with the batteries than I did
I have an old Sony eink one which still works and is perfect
I switched from a Pebble Time to a Gaemin Vivoactive 4s. I think it’s as close to an eink smart watch as it gets.
Not sure if they are still available, but after pebble shut down, I got this Chinese watch called amazfit bip. It has a color e-ink display and lasts roughly a week on a full charge.
I was able to sync to my phone using FOSS called gadgetbridge so I didn’t have to install sketchy Chinese software on my phone.
Depending on what features you want/need, you can get a used Pebble on eBay and run Rebble on it. More hoops to jump through if you use an iPhone, but android support is pretty straightforward!
SQFMI Watchy exists… And has a chinese supplier now which doesn’t suck
The community is also active, recently a few from ground up firmwares have appeared
Man, I’ve been dying to get one ever since a friend told me about em.
While I can get them via Aliexpress, they come with a very minimal case, with the sides exposed. I’m struggling to find anyone selling replacement cases and I don’t have access to a 3d printer to make one myself unfortunately.
I’ll keep looking though.Look up your local 3d printer community
- The seller on aliexpress will probably have in the future usbc version with cnc case
325$, how is that low-priced? I’ve never paid more then 200$ for a phone, I have an s20+ now.
Yeah… It is low priced if you look at Apple or Samsung higher end or recent models… otherwise yes it is expensive.
What’s the point of a phone with worse display and worse specs, and that costs more than my £250 Motorola G73?
It’s not a “worse” display. It’s a different display. The only point is that if you want an e-ink phone (either for readability or battery life) this is one of the only options. Assuming it actually launches at least.
Is anyone using one of the Hisense e-ink phones? How are they?
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I’d get this if it has other messaging apps like Signal, and banking apps…seems like it has android so should be ok. Unfortunately I don’t see it hitting the market realistically…
I wish I could get a tablet that is like the ReMarkable tablet with more storage (at least 64GB, storage is dirt cheap these days) or a MicroSD slot. I’m not paying $400 for a tablet with 8GB of storage in 2024. For comparison, you could buy 8TB of SSD storage for that price.
This is interesting but not quite what I want.
I have an e-ink notebook. The low refresh rate is intolerable for doing anything like menus or text input.
I like the idea of a minimal phone but I think e-ink is a deal breaker for me, and I suspect most others.
Looks interesting, I wonder what kind of OS it’s running.
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Oh, this looks even more interesting then. If it has an unlocked bootloader, I might actually consider it.
the Minimal Phone is based on a customized version of Android 13
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Would’ve preferred a version of this with a replaceable battery and no rear camera.
