Why is it buttonless??? We like physical buttons, how are we supposed to turn it on/off???? This is just confusing lol
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2026
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I think they mean no buttons on the front. Something lime Kindle Paperwhite 10th gen I have used. You can see power button on the side when you look at the pictures in the article.
I realized there is also LibreHardware community. I wonder why there is no post there. This fits right in LibreHardware.
I see people get excited about this. But if you are realistic, buy a Kobo e-reader and you are good.
Copy-pasting me own comment from under this CNX post
I am a BOOX Leaf user. Very much frustrated with BOOX. They do not release the GPL code. I quite like a cheap e-reader with too > long battery life. But I have several criticisms on this thing:
- It uses ESP32-S3. It’s Xtensa. Worse software support. Didn’t the folks stop their Xtensa line?
- Isn’t 8MB (PS)RAM short?
- The screen supports only 2 bit grayscale. And they haven’t written what screen they are going to use. That makes a realdifference. I already feel the difference between me BOOX Leaf with Carta 1200 and me brother’s BOOX Go 7 Color with Carta 1300.
- If you want to simply sideload normal DRM-free epubs, all of those devices support it.
- If you are fine going for an AP, you can install custom software like koreader on many devices including Pocketbook and Kobo ones. Not sure why it has written you cannot run custom code on Kobo Clara BW.
Regarding the last point, I do want a decent e-reader like Leaf I have but with Linux support. To make us closer to the goal, I have > extensively contributed to postmarketOS wiki: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Category:Ebook_reader
As I have written in the respective wiki pages, both PocketBook and Kobo openly permit running custom OS/firmware on their ebook readers if you can go outside warranty.
Cross posting me comment from CNX:
Lemme clarify something about the earlier comments I had. If we see this device as a start to liberate the world of e-readers, it could be a very good effort. If it goes well, I would appreciate it very much. But as a device to use as a real e-reader daily, nope it isn’t.
If the efforts of Open Touch people lead us into an open e-reader ecosystem, it makes all sense that the first open hardware e-reader doesn’t catch many eyes. Perfect is achieved step by step. It doesn’t come for granted for free. However, going for ESP32-S3 still would be a valid criticism.
This just won’t do it … replacable battery is awesome but a 4” screen is absolutely a niche …
First steps are still steps. I am more excited about faster e-ink displays that are currently being developed.
that screen.. alas, too small for me. I use a Kobo Libre Colour now
No physical buttons and a tiny screen? Yeah I'm gonna pass
Kobo Klara is $159 has a 6" screen, supports 15 file formats, 16 gb of storage and a 1448 x 1072 resolution with Dark Mode
You can easily load alternate firmware on a Kobo.
KOReader or something different?
Why is buttonless a selling point?
Not trying to be snarky, genuinely wondering.
i first read bottomless and was even more confused... anyway, i guess it's an esp community (iot) thing where you usually work with momentary switches;)
MIT licenced firmware... Another bunch of libertarian kids who don't know better.
Like they don't know everyone likes buttons, specially page turn buttons,
I only vaguely remember hearing nerds debating between the GPL licenses and MIT, way back when...What makes the MIT license libertarian?
I guess by not enforcing openness through copyleft? It's free at the source code, but it doesn't protect freedoms.
The specs are an absolute joke. Even my Sony PRS from 2008 comes with 64MB RAM and physical buttons.
This thing will choke on epubs with embedded fonts, if it doesn't just plainly ignore them (which it seems like it will, since they're talking so much about their own custom font).
Neat idea, but I fear it's destined to fail. I also think it's too small. The PRS-505 is six inches and I wouldn't go any smaller than that for comfortable reading.
Can't be cheap being a crowdfunded product, but not expensive either. The biggest turn-away I can see is the small screen. Most e-ink readers nowadays start at 6". A 4.x" screen will lose a considerable chunk of potential backers.
Yea, the screen makes it an instant turn off for me. Small and low res. Modern e-Readers like the kindle, kobo, etc. have screens basically as sharp as printed paper at a similar size as a book.
And with software like calibre, I don’t really see a reason to switch away from my kindle…
I switched to kobo only because kindle - I don't want to be an amazon billboard. I'm 100% calibre too, tho kobo do sell some drm-free ebooks.
My PW 3g was the absolute best ereader ever. Snappy page turns, perfect soft lighting, infinite batteries... Fuck amazon.
Thats the biggest issue for me.
I would carry around something with the thickness of a textbook and a 7+" screen, but under 6" is a nonstarter for me. I'd end up with text so large I'd be reading one sentence at a time.
I love physical buttons and switches, I don't like an e-reader without page buttons.
yes and no, I went from a Kindle which has no buttons and was pocketable, to a Kobo Libre Colour, buttons and not pocketable. The Libre screen is also not as crisp as the Libre, it does have e ink colour which is kind of nice but not as useful as a crisp screen.
This. I don't see why "no buttons" is supposed to be appealing? I'd much prefer only buttons, no touchscreen.
4" screen and 16MB flash is a joke. Ebooks are small, but not that small. Considering how many used, end of life Kindles there are out there stuck on old easily jailbroken firmware, I don't see why anyone would ever choose this as an alternative. The software for jailbroken Kindles is incredibly mature and at the point of "just works". E-ink technology hasn't progressed much in the past ten years, so you really don't miss out on anything by buying a $30 used one.
To be fair, eBooks have just gotten that big in recent years because the publishers are lazy and cram uncompressed embedded fonts into them.
I always strip out embedded fonts from my eBooks with calibre and I have seen books being reduced from 20MB to 400KB. 🤣
This won't make this a good device due to a myriad of other reasons, though.
Yeah, definitely think there are use cases for this (look at how popular the xeink X4 has gotten), but a device smaller in most dimensions than modern smartphones isn't gonna make a good general purpose ereader for many people
Ugly and small, cool idea tho
It looks like a prototype for a circa-2005 ereader. Why is the frame around the screen SO large? Why does the screen look so lo-res? And why is it $150 for the base model?
At that price you're better off just buying a Kobo and installing KOReader. I like the idea of it being open source, but a 6" screen is pretty standard these days.
There is a project called Inkbox (renamed to Quill now it appears) which is Linux built with musl libc and Qt on top, that runs on Kobo. Hey, that's open source too! So why yet another open source project with hardware?
The specs vs the price does match up.
4" screen?!
Yeah, that killed the idea on the spot for me.
Generally great idea, but the screen size invalidates it for me. Hope they're successful enough to launch a 2nd round with a 6"+ screen
The replaceable battery is definitely a requirement for me moving forwards on all new tech I purchase.
Meh. I would say that if anything deserves an exception, it's ereaders.
Im my wife's kindle PW I can replace the battery, and have done that.
But there are simply no new batteries for that kind of device to be found. So then the new battery lasts 20% longer than the old one, and maybe added a year to the device's life.
Replaceable battery isn't worth much if you don't have a reason to believe you'll be able to source a good one a decade from now.
while it's nice, i'd argue e-readers use so little battery that even the default should last for at least a decade, but having it is awesome for sure.
Mine is over 10 years old and the battery still lasts weeks. I don't notice any degradation but... probably wouldn't.
🏴☠️
Would I be able to push overdrive/Libby books to this?
$150 for ESP32-S3? Are you serious? My first e-book in ~2008 was much more powerful.
It sounds like most of the price is going towards the screen. Apparently sourcing e-ink screens isn't trivial.
ESP32-S3 seems rather properly sized computing power -wise for this kind of device. And it's quite low-power as well.
Granted there are some tasks where even this kind device could use some computing, like extracting, indexing and rendering pdfs.
If this device supported PDF it would be a no brainer to buy. I understand that the hardware is not good enough for PDFs