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"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 -
by neom 1y ago
"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.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoReminds me of those one-time use battery banks you can buy.
- notpushkin 1y agoThen crack it open and get yourself a decent battery for a project! (or more likely find one lying in the streets somewhere)
- Yossarrian22 1y agoUsually the battery chemistry does not allow recharging
- evilduck 1y agoDepends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65DpT2nqEI 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-from-1-june-2025 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/single-use-vapes-banned-f...
- notpushkin 1y agoThe 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lflk6iY56w
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Ghoelian 1y agoE-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.
- pooper 1y ago> 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?
- TeMPOraL 1y agoApparently so. I recall this explanation back from 2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 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_developing_eink_since_the_patent/ 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.
- lozenge 1y agoIf only there were some article on the topic of why there are no cheap ereaders... I hope somebody posts one to HN soon.
- fortran77 1y agoThere 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.
- moolcool 1y agoOn 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).
- cianmm 1y agoI 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.
- roenxi 1y agoAll 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.
- EvanAnderson 1y ago> 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.
- lowercased 1y agoMoved 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.
- angled 1y agoI keep a working iPhone 8 in a drawer for the same reason.
- cortic 1y agoI 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.
- pegasus 1y agoKudos to you, but most would not be wise enough to know the difference (between cheap and throwaway).
- carlosjobim 1y agoHow 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?
- b112 1y agoSadly, for a lot of people, a "friend" mockingly saying "that's crap" would suffice.
- pegasus 1y agoBecause 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.
- nisegami 1y agoI 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.
- organsnyder 1y ago> 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).
- whywhywhywhy 1y ago> 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.
- naravara 1y agoI 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.
- devilbunny 1y agoYMMV. 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.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoYeah, 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-penetration/ https://www.statista.com/chart/24709/e-book-and-printed-book...
- ljf 1y agoJust 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.
- eth0up 1y agoI 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.
- ljf 1y agoAliExpress 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. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32867625480.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32867625480.html
- theptip 1y ago> ewaste is out of control What’s the specific harm that you are worried about?
- neom 1y agoMostly 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.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]