Why wouldn’t I just read using the phone I already have?
Eye strain, screen size, battery life.
I do wonder what the refresh rate is like on these. I’ve been daily driving a Minimal Phone for a few months now. While I like it, it definitely took some getting used to. While it’s actually quite snappy, it feels abysmally slow even compared to the Cat S22 Flip it replaced (which is a low-end Android smartphone in a flip phone form factor).
I also wonder why they bothered with a camera on it. The camera on the Minimal is extremely “meh”, but the thing that makes it mostly useless is the refresh rate of the e-ink. You never know if you got a blurry mess of a picture or what. The firmware will put the screen into “fast refresh / low fidelity” mode to try to improve it, but it’s still a roll of the dice when trying to take any kind of photo. About the only thing it’s good for is scanning QR codes.
A camera on a e-ink device doesn’t appealing.
