URL for the crowdfunding: https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/open-book-touch
Specs:
- Display: 4.26" e-paper touchscreen, 480 × 800 px, warm + cool frontlight
- Processor: ESP32-S3 dual-core, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE
- Memory: 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM
- Formats: EPUB and plain text, no DRM
- Storage: microSD card slot
- Interface: USB-C with integrated LiPo charging
- Dimension: 78 × 120 × 10 mm, about 85 g
- Open source: MIT-licensed firmware, open hardware (to be released at shipping)
It also has a replaceable 800 mAh battery, I found it cool :)
4" screen and 16MB flash is a joke. Ebooks are small, but not that small. Considering how many used, end of life Kindles there are out there stuck on old easily jailbroken firmware, I don’t see why anyone would ever choose this as an alternative. The software for jailbroken Kindles is incredibly mature and at the point of “just works”. E-ink technology hasn’t progressed much in the past ten years, so you really don’t miss out on anything by buying a $30 used one.
To be fair, eBooks have just gotten that big in recent years because the publishers are lazy and cram uncompressed embedded fonts into them.
I always strip out embedded fonts from my eBooks with calibre and I have seen books being reduced from 20MB to 400KB. 🤣
This won’t make this a good device due to a myriad of other reasons, though.
Yeah, definitely think there are use cases for this (look at how popular the xeink X4 has gotten), but a device smaller in most dimensions than modern smartphones isn’t gonna make a good general purpose ereader for many people