I just started using this phone a couple weeks ago. It runs android 11, and the Ink OS that is runs is actually pretty clean and simple. I use Mint Mobile as my provider since TMobile is the only carrier that really supports it in the US. I am located in NYC and while the phone's coverage isn't like my older iPhone's its still pretty good. You can also get it off AliExpress for about $360 (At least I was able to). Not quite sure if it can use Android auto yet.
Overall I have had a good experience using the phone. My goal was to reduce my daily eye strain while not giving up the phone essentials, and it has certainly helped me do that.
that's a bummer.
There is a killer new feature on android 12 that allows neostore (F-droid frontend) that allows apps to auto update without me having to remember to manually update them.
If you are in the market for a current state of the art e-ink phone, would having to do a few taps a month genuinely stop you buying this model? Seems like a very minor inconvenience for someone who values an esoteric technology combination.
If you look into other Android E-ink devices they all run Android 11. I can't find where I saw it now, but I looked into it when I bought a Onyx Boox device and it apparently had something to do with the driver blobs for the screen not supporting Android 12 and higher.
Android 12 iirc changed a lot of things and removed some features too. Android 9 & 12 are particularly "notorious" in this regard, I still have my Pixel 5 on A11 as a result. (Accessing all "files"/killing 3rd party file managers is one of the things A12 changed, for example.)
There is (of course) always a bunch of hardware that never gets updated when some big shift comes around... but there is also stuff that never gets updated because it was doing something it wasn't supposed to be.
You can't really enforce permissions in the absence of good sandboxing. And you can't really enforce permission without app review either, for a variety of social reasons (network effect, breaking unrelated functionality or outright refusing to work unless you give them location permissions, whatever). Which is the problem with the "just allow sideloading, bing bong so simple" crowd's argument, there already is ample evidence that plenty of apps have enough leverage to successfully extort the user.
Is that really an android 12 feature? F-droid Basic (almost the same app, same dev, same looks, without fancy direct sharing options; you can actually get it via old f-droid) can do that as well. They had to rewrite their implementation of how apps are installed, it took a while. With that only first install of the app needs confirmation.
> With user permission (allow installation from unknown sources or something), that must've been possible for a decade or so already.
> Is this change just whitelisting a bunch of widely used app stores by default (especially in China)?
I am not an Android developer so this is just my understanding and could be wrong.
No, this is not about installing new applications.
This is about allowing updates for apps already installed with user permission.
All usual caveats apply.
Update must be signed with the same key (it is an actual update, not an uninstall old + install new), yada yada
I don't know about NFC, but until this moment I just assumed GPS was built in to any (qualcomm) soc that also integrated cellular. Or was it bt/wifi? It piggybacks some other antenna and hence 'just works'.
I accidentally stumbled upon a feature in YouTube that's killed my binging altogether.
Turn YouTube Watch History off (Google Account > Data & Privacy > YouTube History). I mostly did it cuz I didn't want Google to have a history of all my YouTube videos, but the accidental effect is that when I go to youtube, I literally have a blank screen (no suggested videos) and instead it just says "turn search history back on"
This means that I have to actually search for a particular topic to start watching about it, and most times when I'd be consuming more, I don't have the mental capacity to pick a topic I care about.
The one hitch is that if you subscribe to channels, you'll still see all those videos, but those update very infrequently and you don't see a bunch of nonsense you don't have to watch.
Resolution is the big compromise with color e-ink, the effective pixel density is cut in half when the color layer is enabled. With the current best panels you get 300dpi in mono mode but only 150dpi in color mode, and fidelity of the mono mode is compromised compared to a mono-only panel with the same resolution. The color rendition still isn't great either.
Going eink helped me cut back video content. But I ended up listening to more podcast at faster speeds and since i have youtube premium, backgorund listening. It's... better, since I treat it as background noise and ears don't get fatigued / strained like eyes do.
Kobo is notorious for having atrocious response time. I'm on my third generation of Kobo reader and it's still dogshit slow.
The periodic crashes are also really tiresome - I regularly have to hard-power-cycle the thing and often lose my reading progress. Why this has been a problem for 6+ years is beyond me but my guess is that they're spending very little on R&D/QA, running on an ancient SoC.
I will check in a few days if it can run android auto and update here. To be honest, it probably has a lot of junk-ware on it, this really isn't my domain of expertise though. I can tell you from a user experience, it has been very easy to use.
Are you able to find or guess the screen on time per charge? 3 days is wildly different for someone who uses their phone an hour per day, vs someone who scrolls social media for 12 hours a day.
It happening to support a band or two used in NYC doesn't tell us much - we need to know all the cellular bands it supports, because even a 6 year old iphone doesn't support bands used in a lot of areas. Cell companies are now focused on 5G and a phone that doesn't support most US 4G frequencies, and 5G, is going to be increasingly hobbled.
> T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic, Poland and the United States.
Overall I have had a good experience using the phone. My goal was to reduce my daily eye strain while not giving up the phone essentials, and it has certainly helped me do that.