Open Book Touch is Crowdfunding: A Buttonless, Open Hardware Answer to Kindle
itsfoss.com
It's $149, runs on an ESP32-S3, and skips DRM entirely and lets you skip the Kindle ecosystem.

URL for the crowdfunding: https://www.crowdsupply.com/oddly-specific-objects/open-book-touch

Specs:

  • Display: 4.26" e-paper touchscreen, 480 × 800 px, warm + cool frontlight
  • Processor: ESP32-S3 dual-core, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth LE
  • Memory: 16 MB flash, 8 MB PSRAM
  • Formats: EPUB and plain text, no DRM
  • Storage: microSD card slot
  • Interface: USB-C with integrated LiPo charging
  • Dimension: 78 × 120 × 10 mm, about 85 g
  • Open source: MIT-licensed firmware, open hardware (to be released at shipping)

It also has a replaceable 800 mAh battery, I found it cool :)

  • Farooq@realbitcoin.cash
    1·
    4 hours ago

    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.

    • Farooq@realbitcoin.cash
      1·
      58 minutes ago

      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.