I bought a Boox Palma after a couple of eink threads here recently and it primarily exists for me as a replacement phone to reduce eye strain in bed. I can do all the reading I used to do on my phone on the Palma, I can do Anki flashcards, I can comment on HN, I can even watch and get the gist of an embedded short video. It's great!

But what was even greater was when I went out for a bike ride last weekend and kicked back on the beach for a bit to do my flashcards in the sun. Except... couldn't sync with AnkiWeb because there was no 4G. Fortunately I had my phone with me too and set up wi-fi sharing to do the sync, but how much better would it have been if I could have left my phone at home? Way better! The eink screen was much easier to read in the sun than my phone ever could be, and the Palma is (slightly) smaller and lighter than a phone too. I would love if it could be my primary bit of kit for traveling around during the day, with just enough connection to sync Anki, download up-to-date weather reports and maybe send the odd email. It probably wouldn't replace my phone for multi-day or overseas trips where GPS and having a legacy phone number/dialer is still useful, but with 4G internet it'd be the perfect day trip device.

The Kindle used to have its own cell connection a long time ago, letting you leave the phone behind and access content. I want to say it worked worldwide too.

It did! I took one with me when traveling by sea for a few weeks and it was great to be able to download the news whenever a scrap of 3G appeared from whatever remote island or coastal outcrop. I even remember using the janky browser to try find a hotel when arriving somewhere in the middle of the night when everything was closed. Sadly the "free worldwide 3G" offering has died in recent Kindles, making them less useful as a travel device.

My experience with the Kindle 3G back in the day made me feel like there should be some kind of international public service set up to provide free worldwide internet, just enough to send email and download the news and weather. I think if you have a high-end phone you can buy eSIMs nowadays that should work in multiple countries, but there's something appealing about the idea that people would never have to worry, just knowing that wherever they end up, with whatever device they have available to them, they'll be able to access basic informational services in their own language.

Yeah, I mean, to each their own right.

I guess my point is I'd like for these to offer a model with or without cellular. More options is always better.

> I guess my point is I'd like for these to offer a model with or without cellular. More options is always better.

I think that shopping for a PC vs. a Mac shows that this isn't always true. (Or, at least, it didn't used to be; now, or the last time I shopped, the confusing variety of options on the Apple store is, while still well short of PC levels, way less controlled then what they used to offer.)

Of course there are prices, and plenty of people don't like the Apple "you'll like what we tell you" way, but plenty of people do, so I don't think you can make any uniform statement.

I'm one of those people who wish the Palma had cellular, and it's exactly for that reason: I want it specifically for use as a phone.

I doubt dropping cellular is going to save any significant money. 4g chipsets are so cheap you can buy an entire 4g phone for $17.

A Unisoc T107 is dirt cheap when bought in bulk.

If only price was correlated to the cost of the implemented features.

If they put cellular I assure you they can easily charge an extra 100 dollars for it.

HiSense makes eink phones you can import from China but need to do your research as far as carrier compatibility.