Tag Archives: e-ink

The Foldable E Ink Book Is Finally Taking Shape

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The e-reader has been one of the most static product categories of the past two decades. Since the first Kindle appeared in 2007, the form factor has barely evolved: a single screen, a flat back, and dimensions roughly matching a paperback. These devices have gotten lighter, sharper, and more waterproof, but the fundamental design assumption has stayed the same. They’re books without the book part.

A growing number of designers have been working on a different premise: what if an e-reader actually opened like a book? One with two E Ink panels and a real hinge, held the way you’d hold a paperback, where left and right pages exist as physical space. That shared ambition has driven a small but serious cluster of projects building quietly over the past five years.

The proof that e-paper could bend

The idea of folding an E Ink display isn’t new. Back in 2020, E Ink Corporation demonstrated a hinged prototype showing that a bending e-paper panel could survive the mechanical stress of being folded. It never reached retail shelves, but it answered the one question that mattered most at the time: whether the material itself could handle the geometry of a real book.

Designer: E Ink

That prototype didn’t solve everything. It was a controlled demonstration with no commercial roadmap, no software, no battery life to speak of, and no clear form factor beyond the fold itself. What it gave the industry was proof that flexible e-paper was a viable building block rather than a permanent research curiosity. Every foldable E Ink project that came after built on that understanding.

The book illusion finally made real

Readmoo’s Mooink V was the first design to make the flexible E Ink concept feel emotionally legible to a general audience. It’s built around an 8-inch Gallery 3 color e-paper display developed in collaboration with E Ink, one that folds down the middle to make the device small enough to pocket when closed and wide enough to feel like a slim paperback when open.

Designer: Readmoo

The color display matters more than it might seem. Gallery 3 renders close to 50,000 colors at 300 PPI, expanding the format beyond plain text to illustrated books, comics, and magazines. The fold reportedly passed 200,000 bending tests during development, and when fully open, the crease isn’t dramatic enough to register as a flaw so much as an honest design trade-off.

Mooink V hasn’t had the smoothest road to market, though. Despite genuine buzz at trade shows including Touch Taiwan and SID Display Week, no confirmed retail availability or street price had materialized as of mid-2026. The design made the foldable E Ink book look and feel tangible in a way earlier prototypes hadn’t. Whether it gets there commercially is a different and still open question.

Two screens, no crease

Not everyone building a book-shaped e-reader was willing to bet on a single flexible panel. A parallel design school took a more pragmatic approach: pair two conventional E Ink screens with a well-engineered hinge and let the gutter do the work. The result avoids crease anxiety entirely since neither panel has to bend, though it trades the seamless page illusion for a visible seam you’d have to accept.

Designer: LCFC (Hefei) (a Lenovo Subsidiary)

LCFC’s Gemini took the productivity angle furthest, giving both E Ink panels enough real estate to function almost like a laptop, with reading material open on one side and an active workspace on the other. The InkReader Duo concept took a more compact approach, fitting two E Ink screens into a phone-sized form, which made it feel less like a desk tool and more like a pocket notebook.

Diptyx went in a different direction altogether. Rather than chasing consumer polish, the project leaned into open-source principles, building a two-panel hinged e-reader without the lock-in that defines most commercial platforms. It isn’t the most refined interpretation of the book-shaped reader, but it made a clear point: the hardware problem was increasingly solvable, and the real challenge was getting the software and ecosystem right.

Designer: Martijn den Hoed

When a second screen isn’t enough

Not every dual-screen device fits cleanly into this story. The Bluegen OKPad pairs an E Ink panel with a regular LCD screen, which makes for a versatile tablet but undermines the unified reading experience that makes an E Ink book feel coherent. Switching between two fundamentally different display types introduces a visual disconnect that software bridging alone can’t fully smooth over.

Designer: Bluegen

Bigme’s HiBreak Dual 2 runs into a different kind of problem. It’s a smartphone with a secondary E Ink display on the back, which is a genuinely clever idea for managing notifications and extending battery endurance, but it’s shaped and used like a phone rather than a book. A second screen doesn’t automatically recreate the spatial logic of reading a bound object.

Designer: Bigme

Inkleaf and the case for two pages

Inkleaf is the most pragmatic entry in the foldable E Ink space so far. Instead of chasing a seamless fold, it pairs two 10.3-inch Carta E Ink panels in a notebook-style hinge, with one side for reading and the other for writing. The seam between them works as a gutter rather than a flaw, and the design doesn’t try to hide it.

That workflow proposition is what makes Inkleaf interesting beyond its form factor. Having reference material on one panel while taking notes on the other removes a friction point that every single-screen reader quietly ignores. You don’t need to switch apps, scroll back, or memorize what you just read before writing something down. It’s aimed at a different kind of reader than a Kindle typically serves.

Designer: Kameron Yu

Inkleaf is currently collecting early-access signups ahead of an August 2026 launch, with a broader public release targeted for 2027. That’s a staggered timeline worth noting: the hardware still has to prove itself beyond initial demos, and the software will matter as much as the panels themselves. Carta E Ink is a sensible fit for a writing-focused device, but actual daily use remains the real test.

What Kindle still has to answer for

None of this means the Kindle is suddenly irrelevant. Amazon’s device still wins on price, ecosystem depth, and a friction-free reading experience built up through years of software refinement. If all you want to do is buy a book and read it on a train, nothing in this group of foldable experiments beats a Paperwhite for simplicity. The incumbents aren’t losing sleep yet.

What these devices do expose is a design gap Amazon hasn’t seriously tried to close. A Kindle displays text efficiently, but it doesn’t recreate the spatial logic of reading a bound book: two visible pages, a sense of position, a natural place for margin thoughts. Those aren’t features that get patched in through a software update, which is why the form-factor conversation is overdue.

That’s what this group of foldable and dual-screen E Ink devices has been quietly building toward for the past five years. Not a product category defined by any single winner, but a shared argument about what a digital reading device could look like if it started from the book rather than the screen. Whether any of them fully delivers on that is a question 2027 will help answer.

The post The Foldable E Ink Book Is Finally Taking Shape first appeared on Yanko Design.

This iPhone Case Shows Any Photo You Want, Even With the Phone Off

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Phone cases have been a stubborn category for personalization. Swapping the look of your phone has traditionally meant buying a different case altogether, waiting for it to arrive, and committing to whatever fixed image or color you chose until you get tired of it again. Custom print-on-demand cases get closer, but they’re still a one-and-done commitment once the ink is on the plastic.

The XTREM INNO Instant Custom Case takes a different approach entirely by putting a live E-Ink display on the back of the case. The circular screen sits on the rear of the case and can be updated anytime using the companion G-SHELL app. Pick a photo from your camera roll, tap “Cast Image,” and within seconds the display updates to show it. No charging cables, no dongle, no separate battery to keep alive.

Designer: XTREM

That last part is the piece worth pausing on. The display uses passive NFC technology, which means the case draws what it needs from the phone only during the update and then holds the image indefinitely using essentially zero power. The photo stays visible even with the phone switched off or the case detached entirely. It doesn’t dim, doesn’t drain the phone’s battery, and doesn’t require any kind of maintenance.

The E-Ink screen itself runs at 212 PPI with a four-color system covering black, white, red, and yellow. That palette is wider than most standard tri-color E-Ink screens, though it’s worth noting the display doesn’t replicate photorealistic color the way a phone screen would. Images take on a quality closer to a printed photograph or a high-contrast graphic, which has its own particular appeal depending on what you’re putting on the case.

A more recent feature lets users link their case with a friend’s and cast photos directly to each other’s displays. Send a selfie, a shared joke, a matching photo, or anything else from your camera roll straight to someone else’s phone case without going through a message thread first. It’s a genuinely odd little communication channel, and a lot more tactile than a reaction emoji.

The case itself is built around a sandwich structure that the company says improves wireless charging efficiency and heat dissipation compared to a standard case. It weighs just 40g, clears MagSafe compatibility fully, and has passed drop testing with reinforced corners and a patented frame. The material is treated against yellowing, which is one of the more persistent grievances with transparent cases over time.

Available for iPhone 15 through iPhone 17 models, the XTREM INNO case comes in Nova White, Noir Black, and Cosmic Orange. The circular E-Ink panel is the same across all variants; the color options refer to the frame and body of the case itself. A single case retails at $69.99, which is more than a typical protective case but significantly less than replacing an entire case every time you want a different look.

For people who already change their phone lock screen frequently or rotate between a few different photos they actually care about, the logic of a case that does the same thing doesn’t take much convincing. The technology’s already proven in e-readers; applying it to the back of an iPhone case turns out to be a surprisingly sensible place to put it.

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Xteink’s Cult Pocket E-Reader Finally Gets a Frontlight for $99

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Pocket-sized e-readers have existed in one form or another for years, but most have struggled to be genuinely pocketable. Anything much larger than a phone immediately stops feeling like a carry-anywhere device and starts feeling like something you have to plan around. The original Xteink X4 built a loyal following by treating compact form and distraction-free reading as non-negotiables, with physical buttons, a clean 4.3-inch E-Ink screen, and a $69 price that was hard to argue with.

The one complaint that kept surfacing was the absence of a frontlight. Reading in dim conditions meant clipping on a separate lamp or giving up entirely, which was an odd gap for a device otherwise built around serious reading habits. The Xteink X4 Pro addresses that directly. It launches at $99 with an adjustable warm-to-cool front light built in, removing the need for any workarounds when the lighting situation isn’t ideal.

Designer: Xteink

The frontlight isn’t the only addition. The X4 Pro also introduces a touchscreen for navigation, though it retains physical page-turn buttons along the sides for anyone who’d rather not tap the display while reading. That combination matters because part of what made the standard X4 appealing was the tactile, no-swipe experience. The Pro doesn’t discard that, but it layers touch navigation on top for people who want it.

The trade-offs are real and worth noting. The front navigation buttons that sat below the screen on the original have been removed on the Pro, replaced by the touchscreen. More significantly, the USB-C port is gone, swapped out for a proprietary pogo-pin magnetic connector. That means carrying a specific cable rather than reaching for any USB-C cord already in a bag. The X3 has used the same pogo-pin setup since its release, so it’s a known quantity, but it’s still a step backward in convenience for anyone who valued USB-C universality.

The physical footprint barely changes. Despite adding layers for the light and touch sensor, the X4 Pro is actually marginally thinner at 5.95mm versus the X4’s approximately 6.4mm, and sheds a couple of grams to land at 72g. The same 4.3-inch, 220-PPI E-Ink display carries over, and battery life holds steady at around 14 days per charge. Storage remains the same 16GB microSD configuration with expansion support.

It’s a focused upgrade rather than an overhaul. The X4 Pro doesn’t try to compete with full-featured six-inch Kindles or Android-based E-Ink tablets. It stays small, stays quiet, and now stays lit, at $99 for people whose reading life regularly extends past sunset.

For existing X4 owners, the calculus comes down to one question: how often does dim lighting stop you from reading? If the answer is rarely, the base X4, for $30 less with USB-C and front buttons intact, still has a strong case. For anyone who’s been waiting to pick up an Xteink device but held off specifically because of the missing frontlight, the Pro closes that gap without fundamentally changing what the device is about.

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5 E Ink Phones in 2026 Ranked by What They Still Ask You to Give Up

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E Ink phones have spent years selling one idea: a calmer screen, a longer battery, and a slower relationship with your phone. That promise has almost always come with a catch. You’d get the paper-like display but lose the processing power. You’d get the focus-friendly software but sacrifice half the apps you actually need. The category thrived on convincing buyers that every compromise was worth making.

Bigme’s HiBreak Dual 2 doesn’t improve on the E Ink formula. It changes the question entirely. Pairing a 6.13-inch color E Ink front panel with a 5-inch LCD on the back and running Android 16 on a Dimensity 8300 chip, it removes the old forced choice between paper-like calm and normal smartphone capability. That shift forces every rival to explain what they’re still asking you to give up.

Bigme HiBreak Dual 2

It’s a refreshingly practical premise. When E Ink handles the task, reading, taking notes with the optional stylus, or checking messages, the front panel does the work quietly. When it can’t, the 5-inch LCD on the back handles video calls, maps, or anything that moves too fast for a paper display. You’re not forced to pick a lane. The phone picks it based on what you’re actually doing.

Designer: Bigme

The familiar trade-offs don’t apply anymore. With 12GB of RAM, a 50MP camera, dual SIM 5G, NFC, and Google Play on Android 16, the Dual 2 closes every gap this category used to own. What it still costs is simplicity. A two-screen phone with an optional stylus isn’t a minimalist object, but that’s the honest bargain. The sacrifice shifted from capability to preference, and at $574, that’s an easier trade.

Minimal Phone

Before the HiBreak Dual 2, the Minimal Phone offered what felt like a reasonable compromise: a full Android 14 experience on a 4.3-inch E Ink touchscreen grounded by a physical QWERTY keyboard. Google Play works out of the box, NFC and wireless charging are onboard, and battery life is strong enough that charging feels less urgent. It starts at $499 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Designer: Minimal

The keyboard is the whole identity, and that’s either the appeal or the limitation, depending on who you are. If you prefer typing with actual resistance, this phone still makes a strong case. But after Bigme, the keyboard has to work harder as a justification. It’s no longer the pragmatic path through the category. It’s a deliberate preference, which means it now belongs to a more specific kind of buyer.

Mudita Kompakt

The Mudita Kompakt doesn’t compete on specs and isn’t trying to. It runs a custom OS stripped down to calls, texts, offline maps, music, and not much else. There’s no app store, no browser built for scrolling, just a 4.3-inch E Ink display, a 3,300 mAh battery with up to six days of life, and a phone that genuinely expects to be set down often. It’s available for $399.

Designer: Mudita

What Mudita charges you is breadth. The Offline+ Mode disables every signal at once, including GSM, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, camera, and microphone, which sounds drastic until you realize that’s exactly the point. The trade-off goes beyond app access. It’s the assumption that a phone should keep expanding. For anyone exhausted by that expectation, the Kompakt feels less like a device with missing features and more like one that refused them deliberately.

Light Phone III

The Light Phone III is the most philosophically clear product here, and the only one without E Ink. It runs a 3.2-inch OLED in grayscale, no app store, no browser, and a proprietary OS with a short, curated list of tools. What it does carry is 5G, NFC, and the kind of calm that comes from removing things rather than restraining them. At $799, it’s priced like a considered commitment.

Designer: Light

That clarity is also its challenge. After Bigme, the Light Phone III’s restrictions no longer read as a necessary cost of the category. They read as a position statement. You’re not settling for less because less is all that exists. You’re paying more for less because you’ve decided that’s the better way to live. That’s a meaningful shift, and it makes the Light Phone III a conviction purchase, nothing more.

BOOX Palma 2 Pro

The BOOX Palma 2 Pro sits in its own corner of this category. It’s a 6.13-inch Kaleido 3 color E Ink device running Android 15 with full Google Play access and 8GB of RAM. A hybrid SIM provides 5G data, so you can run messaging apps, make VoIP calls, and browse freely. Native cellular calls and SMS aren’t officially supported, though some users have found workarounds that get reasonably close.

Designer: BOOX

Phone legitimacy is the sacrifice here, which is a harder ask than anything else on this list. But the Palma 2 Pro delivers the best E Ink reading experience in a pocketable form right now. If your communication needs fit through apps like WhatsApp or Google Voice, and you’ve always wanted a reading device that travels independently, it’s a compelling choice at $399 that doesn’t fit any category neatly.

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Inkleaf’s foldable dual-screen E Ink notebook lets you read and write at the same time

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E Ink tablets have become a solid alternative for people who read and write for a living. Devices like the reMarkable 2 and Kindle Scribe do a good job of making digital note-taking feel closer to paper, but they all share the same fundamental limitation. You get one screen, which means you’re either reading or you’re writing, but not both, and that’s a workflow problem that hasn’t really been addressed.

The Inkleaf is a foldable dual-screen E Ink tablet designed specifically for that gap. It opens up to two full 10.3-inch Carta E Ink panels side by side, which lets you keep your source material on one screen while your notes stay on the other. It’s the kind of setup that researchers, students, and writers have been piecing together awkwardly with a tablet and a separate notebook for years.

Designer: Kameron Yu

Think about the last time you had to annotate a PDF while also drafting a response, or work through a textbook while keeping running notes. Most tablets force you to switch between apps constantly, losing your place and breaking focus. With the Inkleaf, you can read on the left and write on the right, and even flick a page from one screen to the other with the stylus.

What makes the form factor just as interesting as the screens themselves is how the Inkleaf handles both. It folds shut like a hardcover with a 180-degree hinge that lays perfectly flat when open. Closed, it’s thinner than a standard paperback at 8.4mm and barely heavier at 480 grams. The body is cast aluminum with a precision-machined hinge barrel and tactile page-turn buttons right where your thumb expects them.

To put the thinness in perspective, each open panel measures just 4.2mm, which is thinner than the reMarkable 2 at 4.7mm, the Kindle Scribe at 5.4mm, and the Boox Note Air4 C at 5.8mm. None of those fold, either. It’s a notable feat given that the Inkleaf is essentially two tablets in one, and it’s the only foldable E Ink tablet currently available on the market.

The software runs on Android and supports open file formats, including PDFs, EPUBs, MOBI, and TXT files, with no subscription required to access your own content. An AI-powered handwriting search can surface any phrase across every notebook you’ve written. And because it folds to the size of a hardcover, it doubles as a portable secondary display at a coffee shop, a hotel room, or wherever else you end up working.

The Inkleaf is reportedly priced at around $450, with the first units expected to reach founders in August 2026. It ships with the pressure-sensitive stylus, a USB-C cable, and no subscription fees tied to reading your own files. For people who spend long hours moving between books and notebooks, it’s one of the more thoughtful attempts at genuinely rethinking what a digital writing and reading device can look like.

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Your Kindle Can’t Do This: BOOX’s Pocket E-Reader Now Takes a Stylus

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Most dedicated e-readers exist at the opposite ends of a familiar spectrum. Closed-ecosystem devices like the Kindle keep things deliberately simple and locked in, while Android-based tablets offer full flexibility but grow too large to carry comfortably in a pocket. The gap between those two has always been somewhat underserved, especially for anyone who wants true portability alongside a genuinely open operating system.

BOOX’s Go 6 (Gen II) is the second generation of its most pocketable e-reader, arriving with upgrades that make that middle ground considerably more appealing. Built around a 6-inch, 300 ppi E Ink display and running Android 11 with full Google Play access, it’s aimed at readers who want their device to be both portable and versatile, without having to choose one over the other.

Designer: BOOX

The first thing you’ll notice about the Gen II is that it doesn’t look like a standard e-reader. The redesigned textured rear shell has a suitcase-inspired aesthetic that feels more deliberate than the plain black slab of the first generation. It comes in four muted color options: Plum, Stone, Shell, and Custard, all suggesting a device meant to slip into a bag and come with you wherever you go.

The screen gets a meaningful upgrade with this generation. The Gen II adds anti-glare (AG) glass to its 300 ppi E Ink panel, reducing reflections when you’re reading in direct sunlight on a patio or near a bright window. The adjustable front light handles both warm and cold color temperatures, letting you read comfortably at night without straining your eyes against harsh lighting.

The more surprising addition is stylus support, which is uncommon at this screen size. The Go 6 (Gen II) is compatible with BOOX’s InkSense Plus stylus, an active pen with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity that lets you annotate directly in books, mark up PDFs, or take handwritten notes on a screen small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. It connects directly to the device and charges via USB-C.

Running open Android 11 with a built-in Google Play Store means you aren’t locked into any one reading platform. BOOX’s NeoReader app handles 20 document formats natively, including PDF, EPUB, MOBI, and DJVU, and supports dark mode for lower-light reading. Install the Kindle app, Kobo, Libby, or anything else you’ve been using, and your existing library follows you without having to start over from scratch.

At 160 grams and 6.8mm thin, the BOOX Go 6 (Gen II) fits in a jacket pocket without making its presence felt. A microSD card slot supplements the 32 GB of built-in storage, and the USB-C port doubles as an audio jack for wired listening. The 1,500 mAh battery holds up well through long reading sessions, largely because E Ink uses so little power compared to a conventional backlit screen.

The BOOX Go 6 (Gen II) is still primarily a reader’s device, but the combination of Android OS, stylus compatibility, and anti-glare glass packed into a pocket-friendly body gives it a range that most devices at this size simply don’t attempt. It’s currently available for pre-order through the official BOOX store, arriving at a moment when the 6-inch e-reader category could use a reminder of what it can still do.

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Huion Note E Feels Like E-Ink Paper but Actually Draws in Color

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Digital notebooks have been having a moment. E-Ink tablets like the reMarkable and the Kindle Scribe have made a compelling case for leaving the legal pad behind, offering a pen-on-paper feel without all the clutter. But E-Ink’s inherent limitations, from its monochrome display to sluggish refresh rates, have kept it from being the obvious choice for anyone who regularly works with color content.

Huion, best known for its pen tablets and pen displays, is stepping into this space with the Huion Note E, an 8.4-inch Android electronic notebook that takes a different approach entirely. Instead of E-Ink, it uses a soft-light color IPS display with AG nano-etching technology to mimic that familiar pen-on-paper feel, while also delivering the vibrant colors and responsiveness that E-Ink simply can’t offer.

Designer: Huion

The display itself is what sets the Note E apart. It’s 1920×1200 resolution and 270 PPI pixel density outperform most E-Ink screens in sharpness, while the 60Hz refresh rate means scrolling through PDFs doesn’t feel like watching paint dry. Anti-glare etched glass and full lamination bring the pen contact point closer to the pixels beneath, giving strokes a more immediate, grounded feel.

The battery-free PW510 stylus magnetically attaches to the Note E, which helps keep it from getting lost in a bag. It delivers 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity with a report rate exceeding 400 PPS, fast enough to keep up with even the most impatient sketchers. Pressure and tilt are both recognized, making annotations, signatures, and quick sketches feel far more deliberate than tapping at glass.

The Note E runs Android 15 on a MediaTek Helio G99 chip with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That’s not a powerhouse and not even the latest specs, but it’s more than enough for the built-in HiPaint drawing app, PDF annotation, and everyday productivity tools from the Play Store. Think of it less as a tablet competing with an iPad and more as a focused digital workspace.

At 7.4mm thick and 348 grams, the Note E is slim enough to slip into a bag without adding noticeable weight, and its 8.4-inch footprint closely matches a standard A5 notebook. A 4,500mAh battery with 18W fast charging keeps it going through long reading and writing sessions, while the magnetic protective case doubles as a stand for more comfortable viewing angles.

Huion has also thought carefully about the software side. A customized launcher opens directly to notes and to-do lists, skipping the usual Android clutter that makes you forget what you sat down to do. Handwritten notes are searchable, PDFs can be annotated in color, and everything can be exported and shared. For project managers, students, and mobile creatives, it’s a pretty compelling combination.

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The $519 E-Ink Phone Hiding an LCD on Its Back

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Scroll through any tech community online, and the same frustration keeps surfacing: people are exhausted by their screens. The perpetual brightness, the notification pull, the way a quick phone check somehow turns into forty lost minutes. That collective discomfort has pushed a growing number of people toward e-ink devices, displays that don’t glow in your face and don’t make a habit of demanding your attention.

What’s interesting about where the e-ink phone category stands in 2026 is that it’s no longer a one-off experiment. The Bigme HiBreak Dual, announced in mid-April 2026, is one of the more telling entries in this space, not because it perfects anything but because it doesn’t pretend to. A 6.13-inch color e-ink display takes the front, and a small circular LCD sits on the back, each assigned a different job.

Designer: Bigme

To understand what the HiBreak Dual is responding to, it helps to survey the surrounding territory. The Light Phone III is the deliberate anti-smartphone, built on the belief that fewer features genuinely change how you relate to a device. The Hisense A9 treats e-ink as the primary experience, unapologetically. The Boox Palma 2 Pro sits adjacent to the category, more phone-shaped reader than phone, though it can handle calls when needed.

Light Phone III

Light Phone III

The HiBreak Dual tries to sit between those poles. The e-ink front handles what e-paper does best: reading long-form content, staying on top of messages, and staying connected without the attention loop that comes with a typical smartphone display.

Light Phone III

Light Phone III

That decision to lead with e-ink also means accepting its well-known constraints. Try framing a photo with an e-paper preview, and the experience falls apart; the display’s refresh behavior wasn’t built for fast-moving content. Videos, live navigation, or quick-scrolling feeds follow the same logic. Color e-paper has genuinely improved, but it still carries a muted quality that reads as calm in some moments and limiting in others.

BOOX Palma 2 Pro

BOOX Palma 2 Pro

That’s where the circular LCD on the back becomes the interesting part. Rather than asking the e-ink panel to handle tasks it hasn’t mastered, the HiBreak Dual routes those moments to the secondary screen, situations that call for live camera preview, quick visual checks, or fast-loading feedback. The front absorbs the reading and communication rhythm of a day; the back quietly handles the rest.

BOOX Palma 2 Pro

BOOX Palma 2 Pro

The decision to make that rear display circular rather than rectangular carries a specific design logic. A round screen doesn’t compete with the phone’s primary face; it signals peripheral utility, not a second main event. It reads more like a companion display, keeping the device’s identity anchored in e-ink territory while still allowing it to borrow LCD behavior for moments that need it.

How long the hybrid approach holds up depends on the e-paper panels themselves. Better refresh rates, richer colors, and more responsive camera behavior would gradually reduce the need for a secondary display. Until that gap narrows, the e-ink phone category seems to be diverging in three directions: minimalist phones that accept the trade-offs, phone-shaped readers that sidestep the comparison entirely, and hybrids trying to keep a foot in both camps.

The HiBreak Dual isn’t a perfect phone, and Bigme isn’t trying to pass it off as one. Starting at $359 for the early-bird black-and-white configuration and climbing to around $519 for a color e-ink variant, it lays its compromises out in the open. The rear LCD doesn’t disappear into the design as if it isn’t there. It’s visible, it’s functional, and it’s honest about the gap it’s there to fill.

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Amazon Won’t Build This Kindle Remote, So BOOX Did It for $26

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E Ink readers have steadily become better at mimicking the feel of paper, but getting through a book with one still requires the same thing it always has: tapping the screen to flip a page. It’s a minor interruption that adds up over a long reading session, and while third-party ring-style page-turners have tried to address it, they haven’t exactly been the most reliable solution.

BOOX, the brand behind a well-regarded lineup of E Ink readers and tablets, now has its own take on the problem. The Tappy is a compact two-button Bluetooth remote that lets you control your device without touching the screen. It’s the kind of accessory that BOOX fans have quietly wanted, and one that Kindle users have been asking Amazon to make for years.

Designer: BOOX

The Tappy’s appearance takes some cues from a miniature typewriter, with two large, round keys on a compact body that fits comfortably in one hand. A small indicator light on the left side doesn’t leave you guessing about pairing status, mode changes, or battery level, while a level-style power switch keeps accidental presses from being a nuisance. Two spare keycaps are also included in the box.

Those two buttons do quite a lot, actually. The Tappy operates in three distinct modes, each built for a different type of content. Reading Mode handles page-by-page navigation, Browsing Mode lets the buttons scroll vertically through web content or documents, and Multimedia Mode turns them into playback controls for audio. You won’t need more than a five-second hold of both buttons to switch between them.

Picture settling in for a late-night read with your e-reader propped on a stand, flipping through pages without reaching out. Or standing in the kitchen with your hands full, scrolling through a recipe without getting the screen dirty. The Tappy adapts naturally to these situations, and it doesn’t break the immersion of the moment by demanding you reach over and interact with the screen.

Multimedia Mode adds another layer to what the Tappy can do. An audiobook listener lying back can skip chapters or pause playback without sitting up. A commuter with a bag in one hand and coffee in the other can get through content without fumbling. The same two buttons handle all of it, which is part of why the Tappy doesn’t feel like a niche gadget.

A 95mAh rechargeable battery keeps the Tappy running for weeks before it needs a charge, and there’s a USB-C port for fast charging when that time comes. The Bluetooth connection reaches up to 33 feet, well beyond what most reading setups require. That extra range, however, means it can double as a basic media remote for a smartphone, laptop, or even a sound system.

The Tappy pairs with any Bluetooth-enabled device, not just BOOX hardware, which makes the $26 price feel reasonable for what it delivers. It’s a focused little tool that doesn’t try to be more than it needs to be. For anyone who reads regularly on an E Ink device, it quietly removes one of the last remaining physical interruptions that keeps the experience from feeling truly seamless.

The post Amazon Won’t Build This Kindle Remote, So BOOX Did It for $26 first appeared on Yanko Design.

reMarkable Just Made a $399 Writing Tablet That Won’t Distract You

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There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes with trying to take notes on a device that also wants to tell you about emails, calendar reminders, and a dozen app updates. A general-purpose tablet is extraordinary for many things, but for someone who simply wants to write, it’s often too much. That gap is exactly where reMarkable has built its reputation, and the Paper Pure is its clearest statement yet.

The Paper Pure launched as the direct successor to the reMarkable 2, priced at $399 with a Marker stylus and six replacement tips included. A $449 bundle adds the Marker Plus, which features a built-in eraser, along with a Sleeve Folio for protection. It’s a focused proposition for a focused device: write, read, annotate, and essentially nothing more.

Designer: reMarkable

The display is the centerpiece of what’s improved, which reMarkable calls a third-generation Canvas screen, built on E Ink’s Carta 1300 panel and delivering 20% more contrast than the reMarkable 2’s display. Ink promises to appear darker and crisper on a background that reads as noticeably whiter and more paper-like. An adjustable reading light is new to this form factor in the lineup, finally making the device usable in dim rooms.

Writing responsiveness matters as much as display quality on a device like this, and the Paper Pure advertises 21ms of latency. That’s fast enough to feel genuinely natural, especially combined with the textured surface that gives the Marker tip just enough drag to mimic paper. The Marker now recharges magnetically when attached to the side of the tablet, so there’s no separate cable to manage.

A three-week battery rating changes how you think about the device entirely. You stop treating it like a phone that needs a nightly top-up and start treating it more like a paper notebook you just pick up and toss in a bag. The internal storage also grew from 8GB to 32GB, and RAM doubled from 1GB to 2GB, both contributing to a noticeably snappier experience.

Notebooks sync to your phone or desktop through the reMarkable apps, and a Connect subscription unlocks cloud storage and handwriting-to-text conversion. The operating system stays deliberately out of the way, offering no browser, no email, and no app store. Whatever you write on the Paper Pure stays on the Paper Pure unless you choose to share it, which turns out to be a surprisingly refreshing constraint.

The back panel is now fully plastic, which sounds like a downgrade but actually makes the device more durable in everyday use. It’s also 44g lighter than the reMarkable 2, landing at around 360g total. What’s intentionally gone is support for keyboard accessories and the pogo pins that enabled them; those features belong to the Pro lineup, and the Paper Pure isn’t trying to compete.

It comes in Ocean Blue, Mist Green, and Desert Pink, three colors with more personality than the reMarkable line has typically offered. Orders opened on May 6, with first shipments expected in early June. At $399, it’s the most accessible entry into reMarkable’s current lineup, and for anyone whose main reason for wanting a tablet was always just to write, it makes a compelling argument for simplicity.

The post reMarkable Just Made a $399 Writing Tablet That Won’t Distract You first appeared on Yanko Design.