It comes with Google maps, but I use Organic Maps with it. It’s got GPS and works fine.

I did have to turn off the compass-orientation feature since it jiggled the map too much for the e-ink display to keep up. Haven’t tried it for navigation yet, but I usually just listen to the voice prompts on that.

But you mentioned the colour correction is set to grey scale, isn’t that exactly what you want from reading mode?

I honestly don’t know. Maybe? I’d need to try with another Android 14 phone (which I don’t have handy right now) to see.

When I took a screenshot on the Minimal and emailed it to myself (to view on my laptop), the screenshot was in color.

On my OP3 on Lineage 16/Android 9, with “Reading mode” enabled, the screenshot was in black and white.

A number of things could be different, but that’s all I’ve been able to test at present.

It’s also possible to set your display to grey scale in the settings for “modes” so you could create your own mode there called reading mode and change the display settings for that custom mode.

Either I don’t have that option or it’s buried under a different name/menu path.

I could watch this video all day (from the product page next to the e-ink description). Is visual ASMR a thing?

When I was searching for a case on Amazon, at least one e-ink phone did pop up in the search results (clearly trying to piggyback on the search term). I’ve never heard of “Bigme” and it runs a much older version of Android 11. It also doesn’t have the keyboard (which is something I really wanted for a long time).

Edit: This one. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGG5RSHC

guess I should say. I think Pine had one?

If I ever did see Pine having one, I’m not recalling it now. Maybe the Yotaphone (which is discontinued)?

Good questions!

Sadly, I cannot answer either of them. I would assume the battery is replaceable with some effort, and I have no idea about the screen. Considering these are currently pre-order devices releasing in small production-runs, I would imagine sourcing replacement parts would be taking it apart and searching Ali for the part numbers. That said, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”.

I have not attempted disassembly, but there are two very tiny torx screws on either side of the USB-C port. My assumption is that removing those allows the casing to slide apart. Perhaps when I’m feeling brave enough, I may take a peek inside and document my journey with some photos.

There also doesn’t appear to be an iFixit teardown yet, and a cursory internet search didn’t reveal any galleries of the juicy innards :(

Thanks, and yeah, that’s my hope.

Android, without significant modifications, just doesn’t seem suited to e-ink right now. Unless it’s buried and I haven’t found it yet, there no longer seems to be the “Reading Mode” I used to have in my Android 9 / Lineage 16 devices that would put the whole UI into greyscale mode. I feel like that would help the experience greatly on e-ink displays.

“Unexpected item in bagging area. Help is on the way.”

I’ve thought about doing this in my basement rec room to make it feel more “open”. Plan is to take a couple spare flat screens I’m not using, build a wood window frame around them, and put some curtains over them to further sell the effect.

Just haven’t figured out a way to drive them besides sticking a raspberry pi on each one. That would also let me make them “real” windows if I want to feed in the camera views from outside.