Bigme Color E-Ink Screen Mobile Hibreak, 6G+128GB Android 11 Smartphone, 36-Level Front Light, USB-C, 3300mAh Battery, 5+13MP Camera – Black – For Sale – Price

3 reviews for Bigme Color E-Ink Screen Mobile Hibreak, 6G+128GB Android 11 Smartphone, 36-Level Front Light, USB-C, 3300mAh Battery, 5+13MP Camera – Black – For Sale – Price

1. 

   Brady – 27 February 2025

   I really wanted to continue using this phone…
   The Bigme Hibreak is a great concept, and quite a bit cheaper and easier to obtain than similar devices like, say, the Hisense A9. I used this phone for approximately two and a half months, and I confess there’s a lot that I love having previously used Keitai with a small handful of sideloaded Android apps for over a year prior (namely, Kyocera Digno NP902KC – the phone I have returned to). I am an avid reader and Kindle user who is otherwise a rather curmudgeon-y, wannabe tech minimalist, so this seemed to be a pretty perfect device for me at least on paper. I had high hopes that I could continue to abstain from addictive internet things while having the added luxury of eBook reading with this device. Additionally, I recently have become a travel nurse, so a phone with improved compatibility with Waze and a larger screen to aid in navigation and actually reading emails was a plus. However, in spite of this, a couple of complaints in particular have stood in the way of keeping this as a daily driver for me and has steered me back to my humble Japanese flip phone and compartmentalization of cell phone and eReading tasks.The biggest issue for me with this phone and the reason I am setting it aside is because of connectivity. As far as I understand, in North America, the only supported bands are B1, B2, B5, and possibly B41. Someone, please correct me if I am wrong. Any way, after a little bit of reading, I was willing to acknowledge the risk and give this a go. I have Mint Mobile (and, for testing, tried both Mint and T-Mobile US APN). In the Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina metro area, I had not noticed much issue with this phone in my travels, but, in fairness, I have had WiFi calling enabled in settings and was typically in areas where I had connected the phone to WiFi, so I am not sure in retrospect how great coverage actually was. Over the last couple months on the road in central North Carolina, unbeknownst to me until fairly recently, I have simply not received countless calls and texts from friends and loved ones, and they are lost to the ether, never to be heard or read. Even with limited bands, I have had next to no issues in this respect with the Kyocera 902KC, even in rural areas. Again, I am far from an expert on this topic, but I do know that I have had no LTE support – only 2 or 3G if lucky – and service would drop out at random intervals irrespective of where I was, including the Raleigh metro area which, for me, is rather unacceptable for daily use. And it is unclear to me why, when returning to a geographical area with (relatively limited) cellular coverage, I would not then receive messages or notification of missed calls. So this, thus, eliminates the point of using this device, if I cannot use it as a phone.Some other complaints: 1) Low PPI screen could at times cause eye strain. I am reviewing the color display addition, and I am aware that the black and white version has improved contrast and readability, but as compared to an iPad Pro or old Kindle Paperwhite, it just was not as readable as I would have preferred. 2) Bugginess. I decided to download a different launcher, disable a large number of bloat/stock apps, and use the default Android settings application instead of the offering by Hibreak, and this fixed most of my issues. But it did require a lot of configuration out of the box and not everyone will want to do this. As an aside, I am a little bit weary of some of the potential Chinese spyware applications (not that Google is much better…). I would be amiss to mention occasional screen flickers and freezes, but the refresh button on the left side of the phone usually fixed this issue. 3) I know this is a small complaint in light of current design trends in the cell phone market, but a headphone jack would have been a great addition for downloaded media.Midway between a pro and con for me would be the addition of the Google Play store. Personally, I would rather sideload APKs or use the Aurora Store/F-Droid to install application on a device like this for privacy reasons, but for many, the addition of Google Play services is a must, I am sure. Another thing to address in this breath is the camera. For what it’s worth, I don’t think the camera is that bad. I’ve photographed several documents with this phone in an open-source “scanner” app to send via email for work, and I was not disappointed by the camera at all. That said, my standards are low coming from my Kyocera and, before that, a Sunbeam Orchid F1 flip phone. :-)There is a lot to like though, so I would like to spend some time not sharing my gripes and command Hibreak for the things that went well. 1) Battery life. I can easily get up to two days of battery life with my current cell phone use habits. This is a HUGE plus for me. 2) Potential to reclaim time with friends, family, and pursuits that do not involve technology. This is the greatest argument to get a device like this. Multimedia, web browsing, and perusing countless apps do not appeal to the user in the same way that a typical smart device without an E-ink display might. Videos are slow, laggy, and cause a ton of ghosting, and colors are dull, flat, ugly, etc. This may be a nice device to detox from digital media and to seize the opportunity to distance oneself from Google services. 3) Aesthetics, form factor/size. This phone feels a bit cheap next to an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy device, but c’mon, for what you pay for, this phone is very comfortable to hold with a neat plastic-y, grippy texture on the back and sides. I like the unique, pseudo-rose gold volume, power, and refresh buttons and I think the screen simply looks cool, especially from a distance and for a short period of time. I has a refreshingly simple, no-nonsense design that, in a way, reminds me of 2010’s Kindle devices. The weight of the phone is close to perfect for me – great for reading. 4) Lastly, durability. I was initially worried as there are next to no cases or screen protectors available for this phone. The manufacturer includes several screen protectors to prevent scratching to the display out of the box, which is nice, and this has more than sufficed in my uses, often putting my phone in the same pocket as my keys without thinking about it. I am a rather clumsy person and have dropped this phone outside a ton – on concrete, on asphalt, you name it – and it has held up really well with no screen damage and an exterior that hardly seems to show a scratch. This is a much appreciated rarity in the current phone marketplace.Long story short, I think there are a dozen or so people that will love this, but there are simply better alternatives available. The best solution for me at this point is to have multiple devices that perform their different, respective tasks much better while also not tempting me to doomscroll or lose myself in social media applications. Think for yourself and think about what you need and why you are considering this device! There is not one magic device out there without headaches or sacrifices that will fix your tech addiction, so if you do not have much disposable income, save your money on this one. If you already have an iPhone and want to get off X or Facebook, consider the Brick (look it up!) and give it to a trusted friend or family member! If you simply want a non-Kindle eReader, I think the Boox Palma will suit you infinitely better if you can give up cellular coverage. If you just want a phone with nothing else on it but SMS and calling, Punkt or Sunbeam will frustrate you a lot less.

2. 

   book nerd – 27 February 2025

   Love this thing
   First off, to answer questions I had prior to purchase:1. Yes, it has gps2. No, it doesn’t work with Cricket3. Yes, it works with T-MobileActually it works fine with Cricket, but they don’t allow it to access their network. So I had some Internet connectivity (DNS worked), and I called their support line with it. Actually I tried to call my daughter and it just called Cricket’s folks instead. So they helpfully insisted the phone I was using to call them, via their network, was not compatible with their network. Okay.T-Mobile’s IMEI checker said it didn’t work. I went into a store, and it worked anyway. So there’s that.The screen is great. Colors are a little washed out, giving a kind of semi-steampunk flavor, especially in videos, but that’s fine with me.This screen is truly excellent in direct sunlight. Which is what I wanted it for.The home app it came with is not so great. Not very customizable, and actually lost a couple of app icons. So as soon as I’m done with this review I’m gonna go look at others.You know what? This is long enough. I want to play with my phone.

3. 

   Blah – 27 February 2025

   This phone is what they say, but no.
   I already have a month with this phone and this is what i learned.Is it for reading? Yes and no.It has E-INK but if the words are too small you won’t be able to see them unless you zoom in and if the app you are using doesnt allows that then you are screw.Is it an android? Yes and no.It has an android operating system but to make it work they build something that works like if it was an operating system on top of the android’s operating system. That is why this phone wont run some apps that would be compatible with other android phones. Maybe they did this to make the screen functional but at the same time it makes other things worst. For example if you mess with the keyboard it may go crazy as shown in my images and it will take a new size while the actual functional parameters stay the same. I spent 3 days typing with an invisible keyboard and when I tried to do a log report in the phone it was never sent. This problem persisted after rebooting my phone multiple times. Somehow in the 3rd day it went back to normal. After that I didnt mess with the key board settings again.Is it a phone? Yes and no.I have cricket and when changing my sim card to the bigme hibreak it actually showed me websites in google but a few minutes later I got a message from my company saying that this phone wasnt compatible with them and I just got my data plan blocked until I change the sim card back to my original phone. I have read comments of other people with other companies that had the same experience.Extra stuff:-color E-INKYes it has color ink but the colors are not vibrant enough. Sometimes it still looks like black and white or the colors dont show up correctly.-Multiple usersIf you use the “multiple users”(a function made for those people who want to share their phones with other people and allows to have more than one user as if it was a pc where no user can access to other user’s data) option from the original settings in the option “more settings” (the original android operating system’s settings).The phone will just go crazy so just dont use it.-batteryI heard how people say that E-INK devices dont waste too much battery. Bigme hibreak’s battery last the same as a normal phone. It wont last for days on normal use. I tested it on diferent days where One day I just read books and the other I just played static games like “grim quest”(a 2D game).This is my honest review of the functionality and capabilities of the bigme highbreak after a month of useage. Hope this was useful for anyone who wants a color E-INK phone.This could be the phone but is not