"I'd love a £8 eReader. Something I could throw in a pocket and not worry about damaging. An eReader which was the same price as a hardback book - around £20 - would be amazing."
Personally I already think ewaste is out of control, imo this sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Yeah, at £20 it becomes throwaway, that's in the same price range as a physical book; you'd see publishers selling these e-readers with a single book preloaded on it, possibly even locked down so you can't get anything else on it.
E-readers don't need to become cheaper, ebooks do, and at the moment there's still a huge gap between "pirated" or "borrowed from the library" and "bought". That, plus DRM and lock-in makes people think twice about buying ebooks.
I had to find a source, but [0] shows that physical books out-sell ebooks by a huge margin still. I think this chart would only change if ebooks are as readily available for cheap as streaming music.
Come to think of it, I remember now; during that time, tablets also quickly became popular and were the direct competitor to e-readers. The low-cost e-readers were often regular tablets with LCD screens, since both then and now, e-paper is expensive. But you can buy a tablet for cheap.
[0] https://www.statista.com/chart/24709/e-book-and-printed-book...
I purchased one for £24, 11 years ago, and still use it. Ironically from amazon (code B006GTOYDS) - can't find it in way back machine still have it in my purchase history. Before they started killing the competition. Miles better than the kindle to read in daylight and battery life still lasts weeks... cheap isn't always throwaway.
In contrast, i know people who have went through many kindles in this time and spent a small fortune on them.
> Miles better than the kindle to read in daylight
Are you comparing it to the Kindle ereaders or their tablets? Standard (non-tablet) Kindles such as the Paperwhite series are like you describe (though they cost more than $100 and come with all of the lockin issues).
Kudos to you, but most would not be wise enough to know the difference (between cheap and throwaway).
I don't think they would have a choice. In a scheme like this, publishers would lock it down so they can sell it to you again. Perhaps even only allow a particular book to be read.
How do you imagine that people would not notice if a product they use is good? Why would they consider it throwaway if it works well?
Because they could always buy a replacement for cheap. Sadly, our consumer goods prices do not correctly reflect environmental externalities, so in a way a higher price is better for the environment, even if the difference doesn't go in the right pocket.
Sadly, for a lot of people, a "friend" mockingly saying "that's crap" would suffice.
On this line of thinking though, I miss gadgets which patina nicely.
Consider the iPod Classic: the shiny back scratched incredibly easily, and after a few years it looked better than it did new (like an old leather wallet, or well worn jeans).
This reminds me of something Bill Moggridge said in the industrial design documentary Objectified:
> I like the concept of wearing in rather than wearing out. You’d like to create something where the emotional relationship is more satisfying over time. You may not worry about it or think about it very much, and people don’t have to have a strong love relationship with their things, but they should grow a little more fond of them over time.
That was an idea he applied to the Grid Compass, which was an early laptop with a black-painted magnesium chassis, which you can imagine would patina quite nicely.
I've had my current laptop for "everyday" use (a Thinkpad, naturally) for well over a decade. It's very much a "laptop of Thesus" with the only original components being the top and bottom covers. (Bottom modded for extra airflow, top optimally stickerbombed.) I can't really imagine writing or web browsing on a different device. (Portable computer, that is. Work is done with one one of my mechanical keyboards.)
That's one way to upsell a design flaw tbh. I preferred the anodized and scratch resistant case of the Mini.
That said, I too miss long time daily use Things. I haven't worn a physical wallet in years, it's some cards in my (tatty) phone case. The phone case doesn't age gracefully either, it's pleather, fabric, cardboard and some magnets. I suspect the only thing I really own (but rarely use) that would age like that is a leather shoulder bag.
I disagree that it's a design flaw. Wear and tear is part of the product lifecycle, and whether that wear enhances the product, or makes it look broken/shabby, is up to the designer.
I remember some blog (maybe HackADay?) suggested sanding the back to give it a brushed aluminium look and that ended up looking so cool. Those early iPods were all-time-great products.
All the iDevices of Apple in their prime. I still have an old broken iPhone 4 as a reminder of what peak mobile phone design looked like. I miss being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb.
Moved from SE to 12 mini, now a 13 mini - just bought used last year. Will likely hold on for another year or two. Desperately want a small screen. There just seem to be no options.
Re: thumb - I have found some gesture to pull the screen down halfway so you can reach the 'top' part without moving your hand. It's close to OK, and it's almost second nature now, but still annoying.
From a few years ago with a Thumb Zone Heat Map - https://www.scotthurff.com/posts/how-to-design-for-thumbs-in... (searching around, this appears to be the source since other blog posts that include it or mention it with attribution have 'Based on Scott Hurffs "How to design for thumbs in the era of huge screens"'
> I miss being able to reach the whole screen with my thumb.
This. Oh, so much this. I have hated every phone after my OG iPhone SE so much because of this lunacy in design. It's ridiculous that we can't use our phones one-handed.
I know-- people don't want small phones. >sigh< I wonder if we're getting to the point that most phone users have never actually used a phone with a screen they can reach across with one hand.
I also don’t understand the anxiety. One of the reasons eReaders are expensive is because they’re designed for durability in light of how people actually use them, which seems to be getting thrown around loose in a tote bag or in environments hostile to electronics such as hot tubs or by the beach. I’ve had my Kindle 2nd Generation since it came out and it still works. I don’t baby it, and at this point its biggest problem is that the battery life has shrunk to only last a couple of days.
YMMV. My wife used at least five Kindle second-gen devices. Every one of them failed, all but the last one under warranty.
Both our Kindle third-gen devices are still chugging along happily. We only use them for reading outside - indoors, we both use tablets. But in sunlight, you need that e-Ink.
> Also, that £8 price was the subsidised price when purchased with a mobile contract
So there never was an £8 reader, it was more likely a £30+ reader that's cost was hidden in the mobile contract or the hopes of you using their book store as it sounds from the wiki that it was a proprietary format
> The internal format seems to be basically uncompressed Bitmaps of 3 or 4 bits per pixel. Font size can be specified in the source book but not changed after the transfer.
If you could make an e-reader for £8 presumably including profit in that price so it doesn't have to be subsidized by vendor lock in book stores or mobile contracts you wouldn't want to use it. The screen would be underwhelming, the plastic creaky, file transfer slow and possibly wired only and the processor slow. It would be ewaste before it's even off the production line.
There is nothing wrong with spending money on nice quality versions of things aligned with your tech ideology, and if you do there will be more things like that in the world. Cheapo disposable tech is actually bad because it all ends up having to be subsidized by exploitative practices like data selling or ads to actually profit from it.
Just bought a Nook Simple Touch from ebay for £9 delivered - I already have one that I bought new for £29 delivered back in 2014 - but a second one felt useful.
Getting an old but useable ereader for £20 or less is very doable right now - plus you can get the Nook simple touch to run (very old) Android.
I was so enamoured with the original gen2 Nook I acquired a pile of them. The batteries, unfortunately, are all dead and I've found no reliable replacements. Then there's that slimy rubber thing that happens after so many years, and that makes anything intolerably miserable to handle.
I sure did adore the old black n white Nooks, which I could load as I pleased with any file of my choice, often converting text and PDFs to ebook with Calibre.
AliExpress now sells the batteries - about £9 delivered. I haven't bought one yet (both my nook last over a day before needing a charge and that is fine for me for now) - and I still have a battery somewhere from my very first nook that I tried putting in my pocket then cycling to the station. Not a good idea, no idea how that battery is - I really should charge it to see.
E-ink is already pretty expensive as a display technology, no way anyone can make a decent e-reader that you can "throw in a pocket and not worry about damaging" for £8. Maybe if it has like 8 "pixels" total.
> E-ink is already pretty expensive as a display technology
but why? is it because of patents? Shouldn't this technology get cheaper with time?
Apparently so. I recall this explanation back from 2021:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
Supposedly, a core patent for the technology expired a year ago:
https://old.reddit.com/r/eink/comments/1e3icaz/any_company_d...
It's probably too soon to easily tell whether that's enough to make e-ink screens cheaper and more available.
There are patents on nearly every active component in the cheapest of electronic devices. I don't think it's patents.
There are many tens of millions of e-Ink store shelf-edge price labels around, for example, and they're a cheap commodity item.
If only there were some article on the topic of why there are no cheap ereaders... I hope somebody posts one to HN soon.
> ewaste is out of control
What’s the specific harm that you are worried about?
Mostly leachate. The 11th generation Kindle weighs 158 grams, £8 reader with 30 g polymer: 100 M units, assuming a 1 % annual leach rate, that is 3t of bromine and phosphate compounds per year entering groundwater, that is actually close to the total UK industrial discharge of the same chemicals. Then there are the heavy metal ions.
Reminds me of those one-time use battery banks you can buy.
Then crack it open and get yourself a decent battery for a project!
(or more likely find one lying in the streets somewhere)
Usually the battery chemistry does not allow recharging
The ones used in these “single use” devices are almost universally just standard Li-Ion.
In vapes it’s almost certain, as other battery types just don’t work very well for this application. Also, many of these come rechargeable now (but not refillable).
In “emergency chargers”, you could in theory use something different but usually it’s lithium too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lflk6iY56w
Depends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI
Though the UK did just recently ban some of the worst offenders https://www.gov.uk/government/news/single-use-vapes-banned-f...