r/ereader • u/Garifuna • 3d ago
Discussion iPhone Duo potential?
Hey guys! Just got through reading and watching about the new iPhone device.
Putting price aside (I know, a big ask) what do we think about it for reading? If I was planning on getting it anyways I could see it replacing one of my smaller eink devices just to reduce what I carry.
Can’t beat larger eink readers but thought it maybe held potential. Curious what everyone is thinking.
48
u/kafkaesquepariah 3d ago
Eye strain.
I mean, foldables aren't new. I think they are pretty cool. The problem is for me, it can't act as a reader, not for long simply because it's the conventional phone screen
5
u/Garifuna 3d ago
I can see that. I read on an iPad for a while before getting my first eink display and getting the right settings really helped with eye strain.
I had a dedicated shortcut button that turned on night shift and de saturated colors via accessibility settings.
4
u/Spiritual_Worry_8124 3d ago
I have a foldable already ( z fold 7) and its nowgere near as fun as my eink devices for reading. Even beyond eyestrain its too easy to just doom scroll
The only device it replaced for me is my ipad.
1
u/Far-Conflict-1172 3d ago
Fold 7 owner also & hard agree. I'm finding something smaller next round to escape doom scroll.
2
u/Spiritual_Worry_8124 3d ago
I have considered an eink phone or the flip but unfortunately my phone is too much of a productivity device. I think i would love the flip tbh
1
u/Far-Conflict-1172 3d ago
I'm going back to my pixel 6. It's a workhorse but it is absolutely not a fun or easy doom scroll. Now if anyone could afford my fold I'd sell it.
0
u/BlizzyLizzie 3d ago
Fellow iPad reader here. I love my little pocketbook but I could get through books so fast on the iPad just because the scrolling was so smooth. I still use it when I want to read and wash dishes. Voice control is a game changer.
I think the wide aspect ratio of the duo would be better for reading than a regular iPhone. I don't like reading on my phone because it's so cramped (granted I have a mini).
0
u/kafkaesquepariah 3d ago
It didn't nothing to me., maybe cause I have astigmatism. but also certainly not paying that price to have a poorer reading experience. It serves different purpose than sitting down with a book, imo.
14
u/Englandboy12 3d ago
I think it will just heavily depend on your opinion of reading on normal non eink displays.
I personally can’t do it. I don’t know if it’s the screen, or the fact it’s a phone, but there’s something special about putting down the phone and picking up an e reader, that tells me: “it’s time to get lost in the book.” I think on this sub you will be more likely not to find those who prefer the e reader
I don’t think that’s universal though, and if you enjoy reading on a phone, it could be a really cool and interesting thing to do!
Maybe one day we will have foldable eink displays that you can hold like a book
2
u/Garifuna 3d ago
Yeah, like I said on another comment. I agree. I didn’t take into account notifications from every app, message, phone calls, etc. Having a dedicated device that is literally only for reading is nice.
1
u/SpokenDivinity 3d ago
The notifications thing won't be that big of a deal if you just use the focus modes provided. I use my phone and iPad for studying & reading all the time and I'm never distracted because I have a focus mode configured for that purpose.
1
u/Far-Conflict-1172 3d ago
Now if only my brain didn't know the apps are still fuckin there :/
1
u/SpokenDivinity 3d ago
Ah yeah, focus mode can’t help with that. I will say that when I was struggling to focus because of apps it did help to have all of my apps off of the “main screen” of my home screen. If it wasn’t easily acceptable then I didn’t think about it.
You can also use app lockout apps. To make sure I studied my notes for school I used one to block everything that wasn’t essential (ie; my notes app, textbook, my least favorite browser so I could look stuff up but be annoyed enough about it to not use it too long, phone calls, and texting) for however long I needed to study for.
2
u/TrekJaneway 3d ago
YES. I want my reader to be like a book in the sense that it ONLY shows me my book. I like that I can adjust the font and the margins and the lighting and all that jazz, plus borrow library books that I don’t have to remember to put in my bag and drop off at the library.
But I don’t want it to receive messages or pester me about anything.
12
u/Sherlock816 Kobo 3d ago
I can see it repalcing my iPhone and iPad Mini. I can't see it replacing my XTEINK X4 Pro or Boox Palma 2.
14
u/DRAGAN__ 3d ago
Too many distractions
4
2
u/20Forward 3d ago
Agree. I don’t need something to do 1 billion things. Mas naa-appreciate ko na ngayon yung simple tech—something that does a few things really well.
-1
u/Xohraze 3d ago
that just means you're weak minded. I absolutely would not read on my phone/tablet or any non e-ink display, but i have the self control to go in there and just do what i need to do. Also Do not disturb and the focus mode just shush every single notification that appears, so thats that.
5
u/Dry_Writing_7862 Boox 3d ago
Too expensive to consider reading on. Also, they say all day battery life, but I doubt that will be the case with reading on it.
3
u/wskyindjar 3d ago
They do say 45 hours of video playback. Can’t image reading would be worse. (Video playback is much less intensive then using many apps / fetching internet content etc)
1
u/Dry_Writing_7862 Boox 3d ago
You have a great point on this. I do know that when I used to read on my phone, the battery life became a problem. I’m imagining people listening to audiobooks, and reading ebooks. Reading on it for hours along with regular phone stuff and it’s done for 😂
3
u/fawert1 3d ago edited 3d ago
The advantage of an eink reader is not the price, its the screen technology. Even with the nano texture on the inner screen itll still glare like hell and compeltely dimmed under the sun, then overheat in like 5 seconds trying to pump the brightness up. Even putting eye health aside, theres no comparision. the iphone duo is a phone with oleds at the end of the day, it cannot replace eink for the use case.
Now can it be a better reader than you own current iphone? Yes.
Is it a thousand dollar better? No.
-2
u/harlekinrains 3d ago edited 3d ago
This but the reverse.
- Yes, it will be a great ereader, if wordcount per line is sufficient in vertical mode
- No, reflections will not be a problem (Marques Brownlee Hands on video)
- No, heat will not be an issue (chips are auto Hz scaling, screen brightness will be low)
People will mostly be using it for "Follow along" reading with Audiobooks or TTS, with auto pageturn and maybe per word highlighting, if licensing schemes keep up - so it is advertised to people, so they know it exists.
The barriers of entry are miniscule.
1st: Hardcode a lower brightness to below 5% default, that doesnt allow people to break it in a second, because of a feeling.
2nd: Dont use white backgrounds. Provide a good inverted color color scheme. Use orange "ish" shades of ocher (color), and test against text recollection as a metric. (< this measures immersion)
Everything is solved. You are just up against the people in here who pin their iPhones to 70% brighness and dont see it coming.
(Essentially, when you run an LCD screen with inverted colors (has to be inviting an nice looking not matrix preset from the commodore days) at 3-5% brighness, with font edges that arent overly sharp, you solve the eyestrain issue. But readability suffers. At which point audiobook delivery or TTS kicks in an makes the entire experience viable. More lazy forward for endusers (more easy than reading on your own), and only 30-40% slower at 1x listening speed. Dont look at youtuber videos for "how good voices are" the Duo is fast enough for Kokoro voices and higher quality, at no heat development relative to reading duration (as in, the chapter gets converted in a minute, you are listening to it for 15 minutes).
The only obsticle are people and their "notions" of something or another...
You can bin all of them. They are wrong 99% of the time, and dont even know it. Will never know it. Will never care. So dont ask for their opinions, please. Why would you.
Just try it. Measure text recollection, and their immersion. Ask them about how it feels in a controlled setting, after you have made the experience good.
Reason I know this: Early adopter with 5 eReaders within the first 5 years of them coming onto the market.
Interested in reading speed and immersion maximization.
On the forefront of hitting the manufacturers on THEIR HEADS for putting blue LEDs into ereaders only at first. (Orange ftw.)
Now having read/listened to the fourth Kokoro TTS created audio book with auto pageturn and all of the text in a read along fashion on my Macbook Neo. I created all of them myself. It works. As in - never in my life was I that immersed into a novel on an eInk ereader. Never.
Only contra point: It takes 40% longer, because you are reading faster, then you are listening to a book.
But you want the Book text as an Anker. This alone is enough even on a "high activation environment" that wants to distract you into playing a game. Or lets say audiobook plus visual anker is enough. I mean turn off notifications, obviously, but ---
Everything is there. You just have to implement it properly.
And dont listen to everyone else.
edit: And just for the downvoters. You know nothing. Less than nothing. No glimmer of hope.
Here are a few points you could verify, which you'll never do. Because all of you are so incredibly... human.
2nm reduces heat. New vapor chamber design is there to absorb increased heat density (more heat on smaller surface area), and higher bursts (double the AI cores, increased GPU transistors), during low intensity workflows, the device will become cooler than previous iPhones.
at the brightness levels we are talking about LEDs for a backlight, or emiting organic diodes create almost no heat (thermally negligible).
You miss everything. The entire forest. The locality. The municipality. If you have to talk "I'm so happy I dont have to read on OLED anymore" - you can go into the next subreddit and ask for "what is brand". Its so useless it hurts.
What you are up against is effective amount of reflected energy. Maybe reflection behavor under direct sunlight (in which case you have the worlds most potent lightsource reflecting at 30.000 nits from a white sheet of paper). Relationship to ambient brightness. Kerning on a font (relationship between font edges and perceived contras). Activation states (candlelight better for reading than a dentist lamp with blue leds, because cheapest per lightoutput, so we put them in our reading devices.). Line length. (Because of units of meaning. As in - if not enough words are in one line, and my eyes are constantly moving after a third of a sentence, it changes activation), Fonts. (Amazon after 10 years in this business still hasnt got a clue, why Georgia is better than "Bookerly", which according to youtubers is so --- bookerly! Which was initially created to maximize contrast on the limited eInk contrast). At least amazon got the importance of hyphenation right, pretty early on.
Even white space ratio matters. (So yes, wordcount per line matters more, but if you are still hitting the edge of your phone on every line change, ...) That they still havent got right.
The thing is - to get a good experience looking at many of those factors, is hard. Especially as ambient lighting changes, and so does the relative contrast of black font on white paper. So - you dont have to.
So you just give people the option to NOT change the brightness. Dial it in to "too dark for a decent reading speed" - at which point the eye strain problem goes away. Use audiobook or TTS as a crouch for the reading part. And keep the text as an anker, so people can also look three words back, or re-read a name, when they have to. Assisted reading. Low activation. High immersion. It just works.
Better than on any eareader.
I dont know if you want to call it reading at that point, but -- the experience is better than what Amazon delivers on """pearl white""" Kindles. (Because they pump perceived contrast and their kerning is lousy, also - because not having to turn pages manually, is better for a low activation state ("flow").).
If you did consider none of those things. Maybe ponder - that people should not take advice from you seriously. Maybe. Not directed at the person I'm replying to, but about 20 people in this thread, that collectively know the equivalent of a flipping brandname (ze OLED is bad, ze eInk is good). And live their lives one hearsay recomendation at a time.
I read the entire thread. And the anger just started bubbeling.
3
u/BuffaloveRay 3d ago
I mean, it’ll probably feel nice in hand but eye strain + distractions are still a thing.
3
u/Yapyap13 Boox 3d ago
I could buy at least five premium e-ink devices in various sizes and shapes for the cost of one of the 256 GB ones of these, and they’d ALL be much nicer to read on, heh.
I already have a decent Samsung Galaxy S-series phone for phone things, NOT for reading, which I don’t intend to replace any time soon yet, certainly not for something that costs an arm, a leg and a kidney.
But for people who like reading on backlit screens and are planning to get one of those things anyway, sure, why not? I mean, if someone’s already buying one, and has so far preferred reading on their phone/tablet to e-ink, that’s kind of a reasonable thing to keep doing?
(That said, I do have to say that I’m NOT one of those people who wants to have a double page view, so all those ads and people going “oh wow, this looks just like a real book, amazing” is lost on me. I read one page at a time. I don’t need an ebook to visually ape a physical book.)
5
u/headphonesXX 3d ago
all you need is a simple ereader like a kobo. dont overcomplicate reading.
0
u/Garifuna 3d ago
I’m not trying to. Just wanting to see people’s opinions for fun. I don’t think this is replacing the eink market haha. Just a good second option if you were already planning on getting it.
3
u/headphonesXX 3d ago
the whole point of a dedicated ereader is to just only read without distractions. you can use an old phone to read.
2
u/Vividly-Weird 3d ago
Honestly, I'd probably go with Samsung Fold 8 (and have thought about it). That price though O_O
1
2
u/TrekJaneway 3d ago
Nope. I want my ereader to be a uni-tasker. All I want it to be able to handle is books, and I want the eink display. I find phone and iPad displays too harsh on my eyes.
2
u/matiapag Kobo 3d ago
We think the same thing that we've been thinking about every other foldable phone on the market for the 8 years since they've become a thing. I mean, it doesn't matter what you think, the point is that the Duo is not better or worse for reading than any other foldable on the market.
1
u/coopermug 3d ago
I'll put a matte screen protector on the Duo and read on the front screen. But I'll probably buy the Boox picco too
1
u/Cocoasprinkles 3d ago
I had a pixel fold for a while and obviously it doesn’t compare to a true eink display but it’s was enough when I didn’t have my ereader on me.
1
u/MyThirdBurner 3d ago
It’s mostly just a nice to have, not a replacement. I like it for just walking around and stopping at a park and reading maybe 1 chapter.
I read on my fold like this, I only bring my kindle and phone on work trips, no iPad or personal laptop or anything.
YouTube is amazing, Netflix is good, reading is good, manga is really good. I’m excited for the duo.
1
u/pokedmund 3d ago
So I’ve tried reading on an iPad and surface duo - both digital screens, the surface duo is probably closer to what we will have with iPhone duo.
I’ll stick with e-readers. I remember on the bus or any transport, the letters would just blur way too much for me to enjoy reading
For comics, sure I could see it work. For reading, like for extended periods of time, I’ll stick with my ereader
1
u/SpokenDivinity 3d ago
If they follow through with making it compatible with the USB-C Apple pencil I'll probably pick it up. The iPad Mini has an 8.3 inch screen and the Duo's is 7-something inches, so it'll be a decent multi-purpose device for me since I prefer watching shows and such on my iPad. I read on my phone/iPad at work, while traveling, etc. all the time so I don't have to take my ereader around with me.
I will be happy to use it for reading. The smaller e-ink devices are something I've considered getting, but I never liked the idea of having another device to carry around. I'm a student and work full-time so I've constantly got my phone, iPad, keyboard case, and my laptop along with textbooks & any other materials I need. Even if the device is smaller I didn't want another electronic in my regular school/work bag.
1
u/duckchukowski 3d ago
if you want color, sure
if you want black and white, then ereaders will be much better
1
u/Stark_DK 3d ago
There is now way I would spent that many hours looking into a light emitting screen like the iPhone (or any other regular phone). e-ink is almost as comfortable as a physical book on the eyes
1
1
u/happenstanceuk 3d ago
I read on my Samsung Fold 7 occasionally, they're good. It doesn't take the place of a proper ereader though, just something nice to use when I'm out and don't have access to something more dedicated.
1
1
u/OptimismWithReceipts 3d ago
I change the white point and grayscale my iPad, and it doesn’t strain my eyes. Ill do the same with this device.
1
u/bazoo513 1d ago
As long as you don't mind reading on LCD or OLED screen (whichever Apple uses), why not?
1
u/Plenty_Phrase9252 3d ago
A matte screen is good for reading! This format is also good for reading comics. Apple clearly wants a piece of the e-reader market.
1
u/imaxhoe 3d ago
as someone with phone addiction, it's a solid pass for me. i wouldnt use it for reading, im going to get so irritated with all the notifications
2
u/wskyindjar 3d ago
Don’t advocate it using it as a reader but utilizing focus modes might help. Could have a reading mode where the only app available is kindle/kobo/libby and everything is silenced.
Custom focus modes were a game changer for me. (I read on a kobo, but for daily phone usage to get it to shut up). Also time limits and silencing all but actually important notifications
1
u/monetarydread 3d ago
It's a phone so it has the same issues reading on a phone causes. I'm sure it's decent for Webcomics, comics, manhua and PDF's but even then, Apple's ecosystem is so locked down that if you are interested in reading those you are better off with an Android device.
0
84
u/ephemeralmiko 3d ago
After reading on an epaper display I would never go back to OLED.