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.
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)
They have a history of really hilarious scams
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/biggest-kickstarter-and-indiegogo-scams/
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
Yeah, licensing fees are super high. Who knows what kind of battery life and displays we might have on our personal devices today if eink wasn’t so encumbered.
They can’t claim carrier compatibility yet before they even source the parts. (They’re in Japan right now sourcing Chinese parts, allegedly, and only have renders thus far.) Let alone until they have a working prototype to test against fyi.
Carriers may very well not certify the device due to compatibility issues. Or they won’t be able to afford the certification process.
Man, what I really want is a e-ink smart watch…
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
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!
The Garmin Instinct watches have an e-ink like display. I get about 25 days of battery on mine.
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
I was trying to find a link to a supplier, could you link?
Edit: found that it’s on mouser, but also discovered they’re using USB-Micro still, so that’s going to have to be a pass :(
My github has a repo explaining it all, username is the same.
The seller on aliexpress will probably have in the future usbc version with cnc case
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.
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.
made me curious, so I decided to look it up. Is yours the original Bip?
Looks like the newer ones all have LCD screens and are more like the Fitbit versa.
This sounded like something I would be excited about but damn we got different ideas of ‘low-price’.
I think my phone was around $1200 when I bought it, so, for me, this is low priced.
I also acknowledge that I bought a flagship Samsung phone. Not everyone does that.
325$, how is that low-priced? I’ve never paid more then 200$ for a phone, I have an s20+ now.
