I’ve always wanted an E-ink phone—This is the first one I’d actually buy
Every night at 10 p.m., my phone automatically switches to grayscale. It’s a cheap trick, but it works — the second the color drains out of Instagram, so does most of my interest in it. I stop scrolling. I put the phone down. For about eight hours, I get to pretend I have a healthier relationship with this thing.
I’ve wanted an actual E Ink phone for years for the same reason, minus the pretending. Every time one launches, I read the specs, get excited, and land on the same conclusion: I couldn’t live with this. Then Hisense announced the A10, and for the first time, an E Ink phone isn’t asking me to pick a side.
Every E Ink Phone I’ve Seen Has Asked Me to Give Something Up
The pitch is always the same: no backlight, no glare, batteries that last a week instead of a day. And it delivers on that. What it doesn’t deliver on is anything that needs to move fast or show color, which rules out video, most photography, and — this is the part that gets me — maps and Instagram.
My grayscale trick works because it’s temporary. I can switch it off the second I need to see a route on a map or actually look at a photo someone sent me. A dedicated E Ink phone doesn’t give you that option. It’s black-and-white all day, every day, whether you’re texting your sister or trying to find a parking garage downtown.
Refresh rates on these displays are also just slow enough that scrolling anything image-heavy — a map, a feed, a group text with photos — turns into a chore. These phones have always been designed for the person I’d like to be at 10 p.m., not the one running errands and refreshing a work Slack at 2 p.m.
The Hisense A10 Feels Like a Practical Compromise
The Hisense A10’s front is a 6.13-inch monochrome E Ink display. Its back is a full-color LCD panel that attaches magnetically and, by most early accounts, detaches just as easily — Engadget and Gagadget both describe it as an optional add-on rather than a permanent second screen. It’s running a 4nm Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 chip with 5G, and it’s priced around CNY 3,999 — roughly $590 — for now only in China.
None of that is really the point, though. The point is the swappable LCD panel and how it changes the way you use this phone. Texts, email, boarding passes, reading — all on E Ink, all day. Then you clip the color panel on for the fifteen minutes you’re navigating somewhere new or actually want to see the photo instead of a gray approximation of it. It’s a phone that matches the moment, and that’s new.
I Think This Is the Direction E Ink Phones Need to Go
I don’t think most people want a dumb phone. They want less eye strain, a battery that survives the day, and fewer reasons to check their phone. My grayscale habit gets me partway there, but it’s a workaround.
Hardware that changes depending on how you want to use it is the better answer. It’s also, frankly, a more honest answer than another app-level focus mode or a guilt-inducing screen-time report.
If more companies build toward this kind of hybrid instead, E Ink phones may finally go mainstream. For the first time, I can picture actually carrying one.
