• 16 Posts
  • 43 Comments
Joined 19 days ago
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Cake day: July 15th, 2025

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  • How does it fare with standard Android or web apps, email, transitions etc.?

    Pretty well. It comes with the color correction set to “grayscale” by default, so that helps. Most apps work fine, but a few have color/theme choices that make the text look washed out. Usually that can be fixed by adjusting theme settings. It also comes with animations disabled by default. When one does slip through (like if it’s built into the app), it’s usually masked by the slow-ish e-paper refresh and only slightly noticeable.

    How large is it?

    The photo in my post makes it look a bit bigger than it actually is, but it’s a bit shorter and a bit wider than an average smartphone. The screen is 4.3" with a 4:3 aspect ratio so it’s a bit wider than I’m used to (which I love since horizontal pixels have been stolen from us on mobile lol). The smaller screen is mostly made up for by not having an on-screen keyboard take up 1/3 of it. Approx dimensions (with case) are a bit under 6 inches tall, 3.5 inches wide, and 1/4 inch thick.

    is Battery life better than on a normal smartphone?

    Depends how you use it. Its battery is small for a smartphone (3000 mAh), but the eink display makes up for that. I can get a full day of heavy use out of it, plus plenty to spare. The less the screen has to refresh / change, the longer the battery lasts.

    BTW there are other good minimal launchers for Android

    I switched to NeatLauncher on this one. It’s like the stock Minimal Launcher but better in every way.

    PS: do get the case asap

    I 3D printed one last week. Still waiting on the screen protectors to get here, but this homemade case seems like it’ll do about as well as the OEM one.










  • Heat pumps move heat. In the summer, it’s pulling heat from inside and moving it outside and the opposite of that in the winter.

    Basically, the temperature differential is what makes the difference. The larger the differential, the more energy it has to use.

    In the winter, when it’s 30 degrees (F) outside, and you want it to be 70 inside, that’s 40 degrees it has to move. In the summer when it’s 90 degrees outside, and you want it at 70 inside, that’s only 20 degrees.

    Air source heat pumps, as the name implies, pull heat from (and exhaust heat to) the ambient air. When it’s really cold in the winter, there’s less ambient heat to move inside, so it has to run longer. Some (all?) heat pumps also have an auxiliary resistive heating element to make up the difference which lowers efficiency quite a bit.

    Granted, newer heat pumps can work well down to lower temperatures without having to engage the aux heat than the older ones I’m familiar with, but in a nutshell, that’s why they can potentially use less energy in the summer.