There are numerous e-ink devices that support browsers, typically running Android, though Kobo is straight-up Linux. Mind that a DIY option would likely be far superior from a privacy / antisurveillance perspective.
I picked up an Onyx BOOX a couple of months ago. The stock browser is a slightly modified (and slightly crippled) Chromium fork. Via F-Droid, I've installed Fennec Fox (mobile Firefox), and other browsers are available.
There are some benefits, and compromises, to e-ink displays. Pixels are cheap, paints are expensive, persistence is free, colour is unavailable (well, on grayscale devices, there are now full-colour e-ink displays at not-unreasonable prices).
My biggest persistent gripes are:
- Scrolling on e-ink really is not how you want to navigate, pagination is much preferred. Neither browsers nor most other apps support paginated navigation.
- The assumption that I'm using a palm-sized full-colour emissive display, rather than a monitor-sized, greyscale, reflective one, means that most "mobile-optimised" apps and websites are highly frustrating.
I've inquired in a few places (including HN) about what app design guidelines / practices exist for e-ink. Apparently there are none. This is disheartening.
There is a CSS media query "update" that would in theory allow sites to switch from scrolling to pagination with CSS on devices that do slower updates like e-ink. Unfortunately no browser seems to support it yet.
> I've inquired in a few places (including HN) about what app design guidelines / practices exist for e-ink. Apparently there are none. This is disheartening.
That probably has a lot to do with the intended audience of e-ink. The most consumer facing application are e-readers, a market that is served by a handful of companies. Most of the remaining applications are commercial.
With respect to guidance, you may want to check out the Mobileread forums. There are a few people who develop software for e-readers there. Notably in the section for Kobo, and likely for other e-readers as well. There are also some open source projects that you can look into. KOReader and Plato come to mind. I also recall a mention of an e-ink guideline in a video by Ralph S Bacon on YouTube, so there is something out there. (Apparently colour e-ink displays should be refreshed at a regular, albeit long, interval in order to maintain image quality.) I realize that most of these source are for palm-sized, or smaller, screens but at least they will understand the physical properties of e-ink.
My own experience, a couple of months using an e-ink device heavily, is that there's a great deal of foregone potential.
Battery life, recharge time, outdoor viewability, overall display quality, and the fact that the devices really are general-purpose / mobile devices (there are Linux, Android, and a few other OS variants out there) means that apps can be tailored to them.
What I like about the BOOX is that it's a pretty good e-reader, and ... somewhat OK Android tablet. That's not faint praise, it's actually "I kinda wish it were a worse tablet so I wouldn't be so distracted by it". Given the present state of mobile device addiction, that could be a fairly broad potential market. Even a small percentage of 4--8 billion is a large number.
Use as a terminal disiplay (using Termux) is surprisingly good. Given that terminals were originally based on teletypes, this isn't entirely surprising.
I'll follow up on your suggestions, thanks.
And can confirm that any e-ink device should be refreshed fairly frequently. The BOOX default is 20 displays, in practice 5--10 would be preferable, though that depends in part on the display mode used (the BOOX has five, from highest quality render to fastest update/paint rate).
I picked up an Onyx BOOX a couple of months ago. The stock browser is a slightly modified (and slightly crippled) Chromium fork. Via F-Droid, I've installed Fennec Fox (mobile Firefox), and other browsers are available.
There are some benefits, and compromises, to e-ink displays. Pixels are cheap, paints are expensive, persistence is free, colour is unavailable (well, on grayscale devices, there are now full-colour e-ink displays at not-unreasonable prices).
My biggest persistent gripes are:
- Scrolling on e-ink really is not how you want to navigate, pagination is much preferred. Neither browsers nor most other apps support paginated navigation.
- The assumption that I'm using a palm-sized full-colour emissive display, rather than a monitor-sized, greyscale, reflective one, means that most "mobile-optimised" apps and websites are highly frustrating.
I've inquired in a few places (including HN) about what app design guidelines / practices exist for e-ink. Apparently there are none. This is disheartening.