MuditaOS has been released as open source. This mobile operating system is designed specifically for the Mudita Pure e-ink mobile phone, and is based on FreeRTOS.
Developing our mobile operating system has been a big challenge in the process of creating Mudita Pure. We came up with a beautifully designed E Ink mobile OS and open-sourced it to fully meet our users’ desire for quality and transparency.
This is an interesting take on the minimalist feature phones that enter the market every now and then, but I always wonder what the market is for these things, and how long it takes for users to give in and grab their regular smartphone again. You can find the code on GitHub.
depends on the user. if i had one such phone, i’d use it until it broke.
My killer app of smartphones are flashcards. And that is basically it. It would be a perfect match, since the application is not that graphically intensive.
In an alternate universe, this is what the old monochrome Palm OS would have evolved into alongside Garnet/Cobalt/webOS for full smartphones. I dig it.
I was interested in “eInk” tablets. However the current choices are very limited.
The best option seems to be a brand called “Boox”. They have devices in various sizes with Android compatibility. The issue is of course, the software is not optimized for the display. And as a bonus they cost as much as a regular iPad in the same category (with much slower components).
The second option is using a regular Kindle + internal web browser. Unfortunately that browser is an afterthought, and the CPU is even slower than Boox devices.
And I also looked into using the Raspberry PI + an eInk screen. There is a company called “Waveshare” that sells those as add-ons. The problem there is the extremely slow refresh rate. (And needs some custom UI work).
Overall there is a market here, but I don’t think it is big enough for anyone to actually invest in it.
Actually I am open to recommendations.
eInk “tablets” are better viewed as single-purpose devices.
What is the intended use for it?
If it is it is internet browsing on a e-ink screen, IMHO you would be better served by an e-ink phone, as they have a fast enough CPU and RAM. The old “yotaphone 2” was perfect for this, don’t know if current e-ink phones are as convenient as the yotaphone 2 was. For example there is the HiSense A7 5G ; https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=335844 .
If it is reading technical documents and anotate them, I have the remarkable2 and fulfills that role admirably. But it really wants “pdf”s, so the only handicap is converting everything to roughly A5-sized pdfs (be it ebooks with calibre, or cbz comics with some script-fu); the other limitation is that files must not be larger than 100MB if you transfer the documents using the embedded web server (occasionally I have had to split some very large documents).
If it is tinkering what you desire, there is a regular linux available for the original remarkable (not the “2”), parabola os http://www.davisr.me/projects/parabola-rm/ .
The rest of the big-screened e-ink devices seem to be all android (with its pros and its cons).
Antartica_,
I think you are onto something. I had owned or considered many of these devices. But none of them offered a “all-in-one” solution.
Yes, Remarkable sounded really nice, but it is only a limited note taking device. Great for what it does, unable to replace a Kindle for reading, or a tablet for comic books.
The solution could be getting a Kindle + a Remarkable + a Boox, and switch between them for tasks, and still not cover all use cases. And that is rather unpleasant.
I’m guessing you missed the Barns and noble Nook. It was a nice, cheap e-ink tablet running android that could be easily rooted to provide a more open android system. It was great to have a single device that could easily read content from Google books, various indie apps I had, Barns and noble and amazon all on a single device with great battery life.
It had one large flaw, the display wasn’t great after the new android build was put on, there were odd ghosting and resolution issues which sometimes lead to really aliased text. I ditched it due to security flaws in the ancient Andorid version it was stuck on. But it was a neat little device.
Yes, I had one (or rather two or three, don’t actually remember). The devices were ahead of their time. Unfortunately BN stopped making them, and I had to switch back to a Kindle. And the Kindle is a very limited device.
Interesting concept. I would like for it to do well in the market. Just not sure about the text happy crowds wanting to use T9 text entry. But then again I have seen some people fly with T9! I could do it, but really lack the patience…
I haven’t heard about it before and the thought never crossed my mind but it’s a nifty idea. Nice design too but not at that price. Shift the decimal point left by one and I would consider it.
I used to have the e-ink based Motorola F3. It worked beautifully in full sunlight, so I imagine an ideal use case would be people who work outdoors. The downfall of the F3 was text messaging, as it could only display 5 characters on the screen at a time.
OMG. Mudita is a light insult here in Ecuador (spanish).
Given it’s their own OS they could add a very good voice command mode for operating apps as well as text to speech. Have a training mode where you read back / learn specific commands. That way it doesn’t need to pretend to understand natural language or more then one speaker. The processing could be onboard and responsive.
Overall this is a very thoughtful phone. The ideal price is less than $200, but for a first release a higher price is fine. Concerned that the low SAR (radiation) means low transmission, i.e. effective reception. The early adopters will figure that out for us.
I wouldn’t say it was worth more than £30-40 max. I’m not paying for someone else’s low volume and supply chain issues. Just because they are selling it on a website with lots of white space and a simple design doesn’t automatically make it a posh must have device even if this was the brief the marketers worked to.
As for other things I agree with others in thinking there is a market for a large format e-paper device which you can use to read books or magazines or take notes on or catch up on email. There is a problem with price and lock-in. I feel this uncertainty plus the chance of your device being obsoleted is a problem. Until these issues are addressed they will not replace paper as much as they could do. The thing is paper has universality both in terms of manufacture and usability but also in time. A book from a 100 years ago is as readable today as it was then.