Okay, objectively this is a bad smartphone, but something is going on here that's kind of nice. This thing is called the Books.

Palm B x, kind of a weird name. It's supposed to read like 'Books', but some people say 'Boks'. The idea is it's an e-reader device that's supposed to blend the worlds of the smartphone and the Kindle.

Now, I don't want to call it a cult or anything like that, but this thing has definitely formed its own little fan base over the past couple of months where, hey, you either know about it or you don't.

You're either in or you're not. So the modern smartphone is kind of ridiculous. If you haven't thought about it lately, just take a second.

It's kind of a marvel of engineering. It's amazing that we fit all of this computing power, an amazing screen, a super-fast internet connection, and a bunch of high-quality cameras and sensors in this tiny little glass box that fits in our pockets and lasts all day.

So there is a lot of upside that comes with that, but there is a certain downside too, which is sometimes it can be a little bit much.

Like, it can be just a little bit distracting or a little bit addicting.

Or sometimes you want to be able to spend just a little bit more time in the moment instead of looking at the world through your smartphone or just scrolling all the time.

And so the self-control argument always comes up, but there's also been this new wave of devices specifically created to not be as distracting.

Some people are calling them dumb phones; sometimes they're even more limited in communication, but the thing What they all have in common is they literally can't get caught in a doom scrolling loop because they don't have apps or any distractions on them at all.

They're purely for function, and this one of them has a bit of a cult following now, the books Palma. I picked it up.

Because I saw our audio man, Ellis, started getting really into it. I seen it in a studio video, then there are these articles about it and these reviews of it, and people pouring their life into it and daily driving it.

But the thing is, this is worse than a normal smartphone; like I don't want to just skip over that.

Like this, it's the shape, size, and look of a normal smartphone. It's got an octa-core CPU, it's got 6 gigs of RAM, it's got a 6.1-inch screen, but it's worse.

There is no SIM card tray, so there is no cellular connection at all. There is no selfie camera.

The rear camera is only a low-res literal document scanner with no video recording. The speakers are almost useless, and it maxes out at 128 gigs of storage.

So yeah, it's clearly worse. But if the mission is to spend less time on your actual smartphone, then all of these downsides are actually good things.

You either get it or you don't. You know, the thing about e-readers is they are typically pretty limited single-use devices that only let you read with a single app or a single ecosystem of services.

Like the newest Kindle, for example, it's 100 bucks, it's thin and light; everybody knows what a Kindle is.

But really, all it's meant to do is read books from Amazon's Kindle bookstore.

Everything else is an afterthought. Then there's stuff like the Kobo Libra 2, which is a super popular The alternative costs 200 bucks.

It has some extra journaling features and pen input, but this thing cannot play a single song from Spotify like the theme in this video.

The devices are solid, but of course, nothing is as versatile or capable as a full-on smartphone. So, enter the Boox Palma. The Boox Palma runs Android and is basically just a straight-up smartphone inside without those data modems.

So even though it has this awesome e-paper display and looks like a moving newspaper with A+ readability and all the benefits that come with a normal e-reader, being easy on the eyes, you can technically also put whatever you want on it.

It has the Google Play Store, you can sideload APKs, so yes, you can install the Kindle app and read Kindle books if you want.

But you can also install the Pocket app, or Raindrop.io, or Readwise reader and read articles you've saved.

You can also install Audible and listen to audiobooks with Bluetooth headphones. You can also install Spotify and use it as a portable, zero-distractions music player or podcast player.

The list goes on. So if smartphones are up here and single-purpose e-readers are limited, they're more down here, then the Boox Palma is like right in here, which is clearly better than a single-purpose e-reader.

It's more capable, but it's clearly not as capable as a full-on smartphone, but just enough to be kind of charming in a sort of can't get sucked into a TikTok rabbit hole type of way.

If you know, you know. Now, a couple neat special things that you should know that you've seen before if you're in the e-reader world: battery life is well compared to a smart Phone, it's actually incredible, so this shouldn't be a surprise.

But if you didn't know, E Ink basically only uses battery when it's actually refreshing.

And moving the ink around. So when it's just sitting on one page or just showing something for an extended time, that actually doesn't use power. So battery life on the books here is in the realm of days, not hours, sometimes weeks for a light user.

The only other thing that can eat into battery really is the backlight, or in this case, actually the front light.

So E Ink screens aren't lit from behind, but there are lights around the front, so you can still light it up and read in darker conditions.

And that light can be tinted to match the color temperature of whatever room you're in.

And there are some apps that also will let you map the side buttons to flipping pages instead of just being volume buttons like they normally are.

And then there are different settings for the refresh modes as well. So all the way to the left is HD mode, which has the highest quality image with the least ghosting, but that's going to be also the slowest refresh rate.

So that's fine for just sitting and reading, but on the far right mode is ultra-fast mode, which will have the smoothest relative refresh rate, but also the worst quality.

This is when you scroll and you kind of see a little bit of that ghosting in the background of the previous image.

Honestly, it gets quick enough to be able to legibly watch videos if you really, really wanted to.

It's kind of this trippy Harry Potter Daily Prophet kind of world where you remember the moving newspapers from the movies.

Like obviously there's no color, and on this model, there's not nearly enough resolution to fully appreciate the video, but still kind of neat. It's better than nothing, but most of the time I leave it in balance, which is the default, and I'm happy to basically never actually watch videos on this thing now a couple of times throughout this video I've said, you've heard me say things like, hey, if you know, you know, or you either get it or you don't, and so you may be wondering if I've been converted, if I'm joining this book's Pama mini cult, if I'm going to daily drive this thing no, absolutely not.

Matter of fact, if you want to watch the experience of someone who actually did try to daily drive this thing, I'll link the studio video below where Ellis really went to the full lengths to try and, you know, carried a Wi-Fi hotspot to always have it connected everywhere since there's no SIM card.

I mean, I don't want to spoil the video, but like, it's a lot of work, and it's not really worth it.

But that's almost like, it's like overlapping; like it's missing the point. This is, I think, meant to be, or at least it's in its best state when it is a device that you avoid smartphone tasks on, like this as a secondary device that can be my alarm clock in the morning that I just reach over and hit dismiss, and I'm not immediately drowned in notifications because there literally is no notification system, and I'm not tempted to jump into TikToks and Reels because it really doesn't do that well.

Like, maybe there's something to that; like maybe there's something to a dedicated reading device that you can bring anywhere with you on any daily commute that doesn't ever suck you into the rabbit hole of Twitter or Reels or whatever.

Like, real people want that; like I kind of love this as a literal iPod, like a portable offline music player that I literally never watch YouTube videos on.

In that way, this is somehow all of those things in one. So, you know, I couldn't necessarily tell you the exact moment or why the Boox Palma became the face of this movement of these types of devices, especially when there are other alternatives that keep getting sent to me that are similar, like the Hisense A9 or the Kobo Libra Color.

Um, then again, the Hisense A9 is a smartphone; it costs a bit more and it has a data connection, and some people just don't really want it to do all that.

The Kobo Libra Color, as implied by the name, is the one with the color display, and that's also just a little bit extra.

So, it kind of feels like the Boox is in the exact Goldilocks zone of just enough missing features that it's captured people's hearts.

Sometimes you're the M50s that represent all affordable, good-sounding headphones; maybe you're the GoPro that represents all smart action cameras.

That's the Boox Palma, and that's why it exists. This has been MKBHD. Thanks for watching, catch you guys in the next one.

This Phone is Bad... Which Makes it Better?

This Phone is Bad... Which Makes it Better?

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