Palma (and Kant) phone-style Eink

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by cosmicvoid

I was a big disappointed that the Palma doesn't have a headphone jack, so I recently bought the Hisense A7 (non-CC) from Aliexpress (mostly just to tinker with). Should be here in a couple of weeks. In addition to the headphone jack, it's a bit larger than the Palma, and also has an SD card slot. Although it looks a bit involved, it sounds like it can be rooted.

I have ordered a Palma and will be comparing it to my A9.

Reasons I want the Palma:

* It's available in white (or more like light gray around the screen, which is even better).

* Screen: Carta 1200, so better contrast than the A7. No screen protector needed like on the Hisense devices. This aspect bugs me to no end on both the A5 Pro and A9. And I'm interested to see the new refresh technology in action.

* Should be usable without a case. My A9 is slippery and has sharp corners, so it's not usable without the official case. The case is quite good, but it adds bulk.

* SD card slot to store a lot of audio for offline access.

* Better integration with reading apps - full screen refresh on page turns in Neoreader, Koreader and Alreader X. There is a workaround using Tasker (see XDA thread on rooting the A9), which works quite well. But I'd rather have it supported in the apps themselves for faster realization.

Possible cons of the Palma:

*Audio: possibly worse speakers and no 3.5 mm jack. The latter is solvable with a USB C to 3.5 mm dongle; the former could be enough to have me send back the Palma. I need it for podcasts and if the speakers are like on the A5 Pro or worse that won't be possible.

If I'm happy with the Palma I plan to use it at home for reading books and articles when I prefer a smaller format or in bed before going to sleep (not really doable on the A9 as the frontlight levels are bad - night mode is too dark and the next step up is way too light). And also listen to podcasts (and maybe start listening to audio books, too).

I would probably only use it on the go on slightly longer trips or if I plan on going to a café to read for a longer period of time. The A9 would suffice for all other use cases on the go.

[cosmicvoid]

Originally Posted by kandwo

I have ordered a Palma and will be comparing it to my A9.

Yeah, I'm definitely excited for the Palma as well. The A7 should show up in a couple of weeks. I figured if I didn't like it, I'd order the Palma and compare them side by side. I'm looking forward to hearing how it compares to your A9.

Originally Posted by kandwo

possibly worse speakers and no 3.5 mm jack. The latter is solvable with a USB C to 3.5 mm dongle

Maybe I've just had bad luck, but USB-C to 3.5mm adapters have been hit or miss for me. And it's one more thing I have to keep with me and possibly lose.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by cosmicvoid

Maybe I've just had bad luck, but USB-C to 3.5mm adapters have been hit or miss for me.

There's two kinds:

• The USB Type C Alternate Mode passive Audio Accessory adapter which uses only wires to reuse the digital wiring for analog to a headphone jack. The device must support internal switching to the USB connector and have a built-in audio amplifier.
• An USB OTG audio adapter that is a whole USB audio device. The device must support USB OTG (most everything does).

The Poke5 seems to have unpopulated space for an audio amplifier.

[cellaris]

Originally Posted by kandwo

I have ordered a Palma and will be comparing it to my A9.

Reasons I want the Palma:

* It's available in white (or more like light gray around the screen, which is even better).

* Screen: Carta 1200, so better contrast than the A7. No screen protector needed like on the Hisense devices. This aspect bugs me to no end on both the A5 Pro and A9. And I'm interested to see the new refresh technology in action.

* Should be usable without a case. My A9 is slippery and has sharp corners, so it's not usable without the official case. The case is quite good, but it adds bulk.

* SD card slot to store a lot of audio for offline access.

* Better integration with reading apps - full screen refresh on page turns in Neoreader, Koreader and Alreader X. There is a workaround using Tasker (see XDA thread on rooting the A9), which works quite well. But I'd rather have it supported in the apps themselves for faster realization.

I've exhausted my budget for this year, but it will be my next purchase as soon as I can. Everything I've seen of the device, except its price, has appealed to me (including the fact that it's "only" an e-reader and not a phone). I'll keep an eye out for your impressions.

(A couple of weeks ago they added support for KOReader).

[kandwo]

Okay so I've now been using my Palma (the white version) for some time and thought I would write some of my impressions of the device as compared to my A9.

Some backstory about my aesthetic preferences:

Spoiler:

Let's start with the looks. I really dislike black devices/clothes/anything in general, both the idea behind it and how it looks in real life. It's a very cheap and safe way to make something look "elegant" while taking zero risk; and it works great the first couple of times. But I don't want to be surrounded by fancy blackness all day - it's depressing.

In e-readers I find it worse than in general: the blackness is used for increased perceived contrast. Sure, the text looks blacker, but so does the black frame around the screen. And I don't want to have a contrasty frame distracting me while reading. I don't notice it when fully immersed in the text, but anytime I'm not there's a risk of it distracting me.

I'm on a mission to replace all my black e-readers with something lighter. First I bought the Libra 2, which is not much of an improvement in the "contrasting frame" department, since it's too white and the frame sometimes almost shines in one's eyes. Still, not black. But they could just as well have made it some other nicer colour instead of very white.

After I bought the white Leaf 2 I was sold - the frame closest to the screen was light gray and very close to the actual screen in hue. While reading it often feels like the screen and bezels melt together. Wonderful effect. And it looks good, too. Unfortunately, the very edges of the device are white - very stylish, but ever so slightly distracting. I use my devices for reading not a fashion exhibition, so I'd prefer it being all light gray.

General:

The Palma looks great. It has basically the same look as the white Leaf 2 - a light gray border around the screen, which leads to them acting almost like extended margins for the content (great on such a relatively slim device). Like the Leaf 2 the very outer border is white, which is annoying since it adds unnecessary contrast for the sake of looking nice (I want to read - not marvel at the device!).

The screen looks grayer than my A9 and more "textured" or "dirtier" depending on how one wants to put it. It feels good in the hand - very light, rounded corners and a textured back.

The glass screen of the Palma feels very nice to the touch, lets enough light through and has the text looking very sharp. Letters on the A9 look a bit blurry in comparison.

In use the Palma easily beats the A9 thanks to the BSR tech. It feels very smooth in all operations. It might be a bit quicker, but mostly it just adds this smoothness. The A9 seems a bit jerky in comparison. This is very noticeable when scrolling in particular or when switching apps. The Palma is therefore a nicer device for browsing the web, messenger apps, etc.

There's also less ghosting on the Palma when scrolling.

Talking about navigation the Palma has a fantastic feature: the page turn buttons can be set to "scroll mode" for any app with user defined values (default: 20%-80%), which means the volume buttons can be used to scroll down one page at a time. It's a smooth scroll with animation and not a "page turn" scroll like in EinkBro, but it works great with little to no ghosting (thanks to BSR). It makes apps such as Wikipedia or Pocket (now that they removed the volume buttons for scrolling functionality) a pleasure to use. It bypasses the odd decision of many app developers to not include page turn functionality for the volume buttons in their reading based apps.

How about reading apps? It's fully supported by Neoreader, Alreader X and Koreader. I can finally set my preference of a full screen refresh on every page turn without hacks such as Tasker. I use the latter on my A9 and it's quite irritating.

In theory, the Palma should work better with other readers such as Librera, Moon reader, etc. In the optimization settings there's an option for "Full refresh on every page turn" in the app. But in practice page turns aren't recognized, so this doesn't work. No idea if it's possible to solve.

Negatives:

* The frontlight. It works. That's it. It's an uneven mess. There's a lighter band along the lower edge of the device and the lower corners shine brighter than the rest of the screen. The upper edge is also more lit than the middle. I can see - and count - the LEDs along the right edge of the screen under the bezel.

When used with dark content in the dark, say, night mode in Alreader X, there's a white frame of light around the background of the screen.

Another problem is that the lowest setting doesn't go low enough, so not ideal to read in bed before going to sleep.

The A9 in comparison has a perfectly even frontlight and a separate night mode slider for full control of very low light settings. The only advantage the Palma has is that the light is slightly warmer. But both are too yellow for my taste - give me pure red for the warmest setting, please!

* Heat generation. When used actively for scrolling the web, switching apps, showing dynamic content and so on the back of the device gets warm. Mostly just slightly warm to the touch, but if watching video or streaming audio (Spotify) to a bluetooth speaker it gets almost hot. I don't know if this will be a problem for the longevity of the Palma.

It also gets slightly warm when charging over USB from the laptop. When using a charger it got really hot, so I would definitely avoid that, especially considering all the reports of cracked screens when charged overnight that Onyx has.

* Audio. No 3.5mm. Speakers are okay, but not loud enough (or rather the quality quickly deteriorates after 50% of max volume). I don't have bluetooth headphones, so I can't test that, but streaming audio to a bluetooth speaker heats up the device, so I don't feel comfortable doing that. I have tried using Apple's 3.5mm -> USB C dongle and it works alright. I haven't played around enough with it to say anything definitive other than the volume being lower than on the A9, which has really good audio internals.

Misc:

* Battery life. It's okay. Would probably last a week with Wifi off. For my quite heavy use at home with Wifi on (off when screen is off) it lasts 2-3 days. Has no quick charge, but doesn't take too long to charge. The A9 drains much quicker, but also charges very quick, so it's not a problem for me.

* Ergonomics. It feels nice in the hand, but I like the higher placement of the volume buttons on my A9. They are also easier to press on the A9, whereas they require some force on the Palma. Both work just fine, though.

* Killing of apps. Onyx has a habit of killing all the apps not actively used in a while. This is a nuisance. The device has 6 GB of RAM and almost none of it in use, as it keeps killing everything. Just let them be inactive but loaded in the background, so I can switch to them from the recent apps screen instead of starting them up again from the home screen.

Conclusion:

All in all, I'm happy with the device, despite some clear negatives (frontlight and audio). I use it at home and my A9 on the go, since I use it as my phone.

I would love to see a phone version of this in the future with a metal corpus, a bigger battery and quick charging.