Germany_chris

I don’t know if the PWM thing is what the poster is actually talking about but the PWM thing has been all over the tech internet since OLED hit mass market phones.

staehpj1

It seems likely that they are. Pulse-Width Modulation doesn't bother everyone and is only an issue above when below 100% brightness and above 0%. Depending on the person and the display it may not be a problem until you get down to some particular level like say 70%. At least that is what I have read. That may allow some to avoid the problem and still lower the battery usage a bit. I am not sure if there is similar comfort possible at the bottom end of the scale. My best guess is no.

cnickroot

Video too long, didn't watch, I assume. The video explains that the screen is monochrome, but the photos are color. The photo quality is not very good though, so I wouldn't use it either except for documentation type photos. Not ones for memories.

RollingExist

Waterproofing is the #1 most important thing in a touring phone for me. I picked up a refurbished Galaxy S10 for $350 recently and it's got great battery life and good waterproofing. Seems to be the best touring setup for me.

gauvins

Good point (waterproof). This being said, I've toured with an S10 this past summer. It is waterproof alright, but very finicky WRT humidity when you attempt to charge it -- I mean, no rain but very humid conditions and impossible to get it to charge -- to the point of preventing me from reviewing next day's route despite having plenty of power left in my battery bank... (first world problem )

RollingExist

Maybe yours is overly sensitive? I've had pretty good luck with charging mine in humid environments, as long as there isn't any visible water on the port/plug it works fine even in extreme humidity. I have noticed that if it gets the 'your port is wet' error, it will tend to stick for a while even after everything is very dry unless you restart it. I've figured out that if I get that error it's best to always restart it before I try again.

veganbikes

The E-Ink sounds promising but I don't want to give up color for those times I actually need it. Really I just want another iPhone SE (the 5 edition not the new one) with a better battery. If they could make a ruggedized phone with a similar-ish footprint to my current phone that would be great. A little thicker is fine especially if I can do without the LifeProof case and a tiny bit longer or wider is acceptable but I don't need a tablet in my pocket. I also do prefer to have a 3.5mm audio jack because I like to jack off rather than use the blueteeth or have to use the dang lighting headphones (which I have to do now because my last headphone connector got broken and the new ones don't work with the old cases.

gauvins

FWIW -- the technology is moving in this direction. Hisense makes color e-ink handsets and Boox has introduced color e-ink tablets. Not really clear if this is for the better. Colors are washed out and the battery life suffers. But you are right when you say that on occasion you may need it (e.g. reading a map rendered in color is much much easier than in grayscale). From what I read, color e-ink isn't ready for prime time.

njkayaker

The color is also at a lower resolution.

If "prime time" is the quality of typical/normal phone screens, it doesn't seem that e-ink will ever be ready. (That doesn't mean e-ink is bad; it's just useful for other purposes.)

gauvins

[UPDATE]
I've used this e-ink phone as my main phone for about a month. It is a competent device with, unfortunately, a fatal flaw -- the custom ROM isn't recognised as a safe platform by some applications. No banking app wasn't a problem for me (you can always used the www interface, but Canada now requires anyone entering the country to use the "ArriveCan" app, which, for security reason, checks if it runs on an unmodified Android system. So I am back to a Galaxy class device.

mev

Follow up question:
How did you install the ArriveCan application?

For curiosity, I also got an HiSense a5 over the holidays. I noticed there were instructions online on how to get Google Play store installed. Those generally involved getting root access and going into developer mode to copy across applications. In that sense, definitely a modified Android system.

However, rather than going that path - since I had just a few apps I might be interested in, I went to see instead if I could download the APK files for those apps and then install them without bringing across all of Google Play. For example doing a web search of "maps me apk" brought me the expected reference to play.google.com. However, it also brought me a reference to apkpure.com and to softonic.com and a few other places. I downloaded it and seems to work fine.

A similar search for "arrivecan apk download" turns up similar locations where one can download the APK file.

So I'm curious whether the modifications that were done to Android were done by HiSense itself before you got the phone or whether you made modifications that were needed to install the app.

gauvins

Via Play Store. I have the modified ROM model. I could install the app but it didn't work because Google Services isn't secure.

From what I understand, CECT offers to install a custom ROM cooked up by some local hack. You probably have the stock Hisense (Chinese/English) ROM model, that comes without the Google framework. If you are patient, you can find out how to circumvent the absence of Play Store. My understanding is that applications that require Google framework, for security reasons, will not work on either A5 ROMs, by design (i.e. these apps are designed to work only on compliant platforms)

As things stand for now, I plan to carry both phones on tour, very possibly relying more on the A5 (much better battery life + daylight readability) than on my S10.