Was just looking at this. What keeps me from buying is the screen is just too small. I'd love to slap this magnetically on the back of my iPhone and have it on the go as a focused reading device but eyes after 40 aren't so happy about reading super tiny characters.
My two wishes are: to size it up so it is roughly the width of a modern smartphone (2.72" -> 2.8") and decrease bezel size. At these small sizes, even 1/2 to 3/4" screen size increase is a big deal in area gained, which leads to more comfort reading and less line scanning.
Hope they'll ship one with the size up 4.7" ED047TC1 display [1] instead.
[1] https://github.com/Xinyuan-LilyGO/LilyGo-EPD47/blob/esp32s3/...
The screen size isn't really an issue for font sizes. Just put fewer words on the screen.
There are e-readers that put a single word on the screen, this can fit plenty in a decent font size, you'll have to switch pages more often, but I haven't found that to be an issue, the button is very light to press and the page transition (with Crosspoint) is fast.
Agree, for me less words on screen is a feature not a bug. At least for the shape of my brain, it stops me from getting lost in the text or skipping up/down the page accidentally. The side/front page turn button redundancy means the act of page turning just fades into reflexiveness and I end up reading faster and retaining more
I've read an entire book on the X3 attached to the back of my phone and it hasn't been an issue. Reading horizontally I get close enough to the 80 chars per line ideal that it doesn't bother me at all.
I mean, people read HN articles and discuss them on phones all the time.
Poorly.
Using a touchscreen easily halves my effective intelligence. The frictions in both reading and typing are huge.
(Written from a desktop.)
Phone screens are larger, higher res, pinch zoomable, and have backlighting that creates uniform contrast and readability in nearly all lighting conditions.