It's back. It's back. It's books
In all seriousness, I'm very excited to be unboxing another books product
How many how long has it been a year two years three? It feels like forever
I was so happy just saying their name and now they're here with the books pama to pro. It's a phone
Asterix not really don't worry. I'll explain everything basically. It's an e-paper
Phone-sized device and we got a white and a black one. Which one should I do first white chess rules Bobby Fisher?
Okay, ooh a nice like orange. Ah, why did I do that? It's like I've never unboxed something before
Okay, so we got the phone right there. What else is in the box a little paper a little explainer
Got a sim card sim card removal tool. Oh because this is a phone, right? No
Stay with me USB-C to a cable. That's an interesting choice
That's three and a half feet and that's it
That's it. That's in the actual phone box No charger no anything because it's like maybe that's why they gave the USB a cable because you can plug that into anything
All right, let's look at the phone and we will cover that stuff in a second the device
Yeah, you keep calling it a phone because look at it. It looks like a phone
But it's not a phone and now the reason why I'll just tell you right now
The reason why it's a phone but not a phone is because it has a sim card slot
You can put a sim card in there, but you can only use data
You can't use it for phone calls or for texting via SMS or MMS or RCS or whatever the kids are using these days
But that leads me to ask many questions about why we have a phone size device that can do it can do data
You can go out there and have data on the go like a phone
You just can't call people and I have a theory I have a theory for why that is but first let's look at the phone itself
So we got these 6.13 inch e-paper display on the back. We've got this whoo like a nice
Texture what is going on there? It's got like a I think that's meant to kind of like evoke paper
It's more bumpy than paper obviously, but like at a glance it kind of looks like paper. I like it. I don't know
It's like a I don't know what you it's some kind of polymer that is a 16 megapixel camera
And it yeah, it is very very tiny and I think that's too signal to you that you probably shouldn't be using it
On the top we just have a mic on the right side
We have the power button, which is also a fingerprint reader on the bottom
We have a USB-C port and a speaker grill and a mic and the combo
SIM card slash micro SD card slot and on the left side
We have the volume rocker and another button that I would know if I looked at the quick start guide
But I didn't customizable function button. Okay, got a light sensor on the front here and a speaker by all accounts
This certainly appears to be a phone now before we get too deep into actually using this thing as you can see
It appears to be running Android and it is Android 15 real quick. There's some other things here
We've got the Incense plus which is Boox's
Stylus I guess it's not I don't know if they want me to call it a stylus or not and frankly, I don't care
Oh, wow. Okay. This is an interesting design We've got USB-C port along the body of the pen there with and maybe an LED or a reset pin
I'm not sure on the other side We've got a button and then tips which are replaceable as evidenced by the box of
Replacement tips. Does it work just like out of the box? Can I do stuff with it? Or I mean, we'll find out. I'll use that in a second
That's this the Incense plus
And then we got a cover. Ooh This is kind of a nice fancy cover. What? Oh
interesting it comes with okay, so it's got a it's got a
Case in it that has what I like that and has this is magnetic something was sticking to it
So it's a plastic case with a magnet ring on it and then a cover for the screen
that wraps around the back and
Connects to the front again, so you would take off the flap and then open up the main book without taking it all off
You'd do that. I don't know if I like that. I'm trying to think if I'm like misunderstanding, but I don't think I am
I think this is just kind of a wonky
Hey, it's original I don't love how that looks when you
When you when you flip it around and you it's all like done up properly. I want it to be level
It doesn't matter at all But you know as long as we're talking about nice aesthetics and like design and stuff
And then I'm guessing that this also has a magnet here, so you could attach that to something probably
I mean, I'll give them I'll give them originality points for sure and like, you know, it's like a kind of a leatherette
Covering I don't know if it's leather. It's leather something. It's meant to kind of feel like leather
It's just like dangling Boox, you know, I love you. Okay real quick. What does the black one look like? Probably like the same thing but black
Yep But that ooh that is like nice and sleek
I don't know I like I like I kind of like the two-tone nature of this one where you kind of got the lighter back and then the
These sides are like a slightly different color. That looks sleek. That is like this guy. Ooh, this guy reads a lot of books
He probably has helped self helped himself so many times
Anyway, I'm gonna stick with the white one though. Ah, but Riley, what about the sponsor? Okay now, I'll say that I do not have
experience with the previous books Palma devices. This is my first
kind of go at checking out the their phone sized things
But I hear that people like them. They're they're often put forward as one of the pretty good options for a small e-paper
You know e-reader type device. I feel like there's a bit bright for you, Andrew and I'm sensitive to your
Needs there's dual backlight control. So this is like the strength of the backlight. This is brightness
And then this is temperature. So you can have cool temperature or warm temperature. I like that. This is nice
I've had there's been other devices where the two sliders are one is like a warm backlight
And the other one is a blue backlight and you have to like choose you have to mix them and match them
How you want, but I think I like this better where I'm like, okay I'm in a dark room. So I know I want it a bit wait. It's e-paper. It's not a regular display
Whatever you get it and you'll notice that I just drag down from the top and we got into quick settings
Just like a normal Android device because this is an Android device. It's running Android 15
Obviously with books his own kind of skin on here, which overall does not offend me
I like the minimalist design. It works well with the e-paper
display, which is a collido 3 color e-paper display, which apparently has one of its big
Selling points that it reduces blue light. It's less toxic for your eyes or something
Um, we'll see how my eyes feel at the end Andrew pointed out that you can see a little bit of image retention still right there because the screen hasn't
Done a full refresh. Is there a what I forget what device it was recently that had like a dedicated screen refresh button
Which I thought was pretty handy, but at this but with this thing it seems like I'll just have to I'm sure that there's some
Setting to do that. Okay. That's some sort of quick settings floaty bubble thing
I'm sure you can disable that which I would very much like to do
I don't know why all of these phone companies making software think that people want little bubbles floating around
Surely you want quick access to our services over the other ones. No, I don't
This is kind of an interesting configuration of icons at the bottom here. We got oh, is that that screen refresh?
There it is. So there is a screen refresh button always always accessible if I open an app
Yeah, nice. All right. You did it books. I knew you could and then we got the typical Android
A home button back button multitasking
Is this the settings? Oh, this is a quick settings
Interesting. I think I remember this the the books tablet that I did back in the day
Also had this like kind of quick settings things that could pop up switch refresh mode
One thing that we're seeing a lot with these smaller e-paper devices is well and larger tablets as well is
Modes that you can trade off Screen quality for speed. So here we got hd quality
Ooh, that does look a little sharper than whatever we I think I guess we were on speed mode speed mode definitely looks worse
I mean, you're not going to get like astoundingly amazing visuals on the
824 by 1648 display and on the 6.13 inch screen here that equates to about 300 ppi
In black and white mode if you're in color mode as we are right now. It's only 150 ppi
Our Labs team pointed out in their testing that it's 150 ppi in color mode. That's not the case for devices that have the
gallery 3 display now, apparently there are some other trade-offs
but you can have that 300 ppi ppi
Pixel density while also having color So, I don't know I you know, I'm not going to judge the choices they make. I mean actually I will that's the whole that's my whole job here
I guess I didn't notice here that you can kind of switch between
The recommended settings the fast refresh settings that'll change these settings down here or you can have fully custom
Suffice to say there's a lot of depth here and you can play around until you find something that like looks pretty good to you
So I'm not going to dive too much into the custom settings, but just know there's some color here
But it's interesting that color e-paper devices have become a thing because part of the whole appeal of having a device like this is that you
Have a worse screen So that you are not tempted
To use it for things that you would use your normal phone for which is why
I think that these guys listen to me and maybe they were working on this device before I expressed in a video that like you know
The solution to this whole attention problem is not having a minimalist phone
That forces you into like this little box. You can only do some things with your devices. It's it's up to you really
It's a self-control thing. It's not so much like oh the hardware is to blame
So maybe they were working on this before I said that but you know time could be non-linear
Have you seen a rival if you haven't why not go watch it right now?
I'm just kidding after this So basically I like that these guys are saying with this device
You cannot use it as your normal phone If you care about your normal phone having the ability to call people and text people via traditional methods
Which I think most people even though we barely use that anymore most people still want that as part of their phone
So you're not going to use this as your phone. You're going to use it as an Android device like for example, you can use it
For maps and it'll work. It's got gps. In fact, it's got assisted gps
Which uses data to help with the gps positioning
Funny enough maps is not installed on this device. So I'm going to install it
I'm finding that some of the taps aren't really like registering
Some of the kind of slower responsiveness here may also be due to the fact that the chip that we're running on here is a snapdragon
6350 Which if you know anything about snapdragon, you're going to know that that's not the flagship and speaking of performance
our Labs team ran some testing on the CPU here and
Interestingly, they could not run the standard mobile geek bench setup that we use
But they were able to run antutu where the books palmatu pro scored
212,863 which for context
Seems to be around the ballpark of a samsung galaxy a16
And less than a quarter of the score Of the of a red magic 10 pro that's according to numbers on antutu's website
So you're not dealing with a incredibly fast incredibly powerful
Chip here. However, I'm in a some kind of mode that's making the refresh
Less than inspiring although for an eink display. I mean I have used much much worse
I mean like look at this. This is this is like, you know, it's like using a slightly slower
OLED display not OLED, but you know traditional display
I do want to just like go into like the fast okay fast refresh. Ooh
What? so fast refresh
Brought more color in and more contrast that looks way better and it's much more responsive more color and more responsive
All right, let's see what this stylus experience is like with the ink sense plus. Oh stylus
Do you want to display handwriting functions? Yeah, oh, okay. So now this stylus is working like my finger. That's all I've ever wanted
Stylus fingers kids mode free mark. What is this? So this free mark
app appears to be Something where you can either enable handwriting mode and then you can like draw on your screen and make notes
And then you can save the screenshot and then that'll be there for you to save or to send it to somebody or you can
Enable using mode and then now it's acting more now. It's just acting like your finger. It's kind of cool
Actually like that that might be very useful if you're kind of going through
documents or something and you want to you want to
Use it Turn pages and then oh i'm going to enter notes mode and circle something save it goes away go back to using mode
That's pretty cool. Nice one. Bukes. So the ink sense plus has
4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. That's kind of the standard thing you hear
Got a shortcut button on top that i'm guessing is customizable
I got to say there's something about using Android e-paper devices, especially in some apps
It seems like some apps can really take advantage of the advances in refresh rate that have been made with this technology
And other apps like are not optimized for it using the settings app where you can't
Scroll and see like I can't peek
At what i'm going to see under there. I scroll and then I have to
Accept what's going to show up and it's like just like that. That is very frustrating to use
So I feel like priority number one. I don't know maybe don't listen to me
But if it was me priority number one would be making it so that I can scroll and like
Not have to scroll in and wait scroll wait scroll wait. I just realized when you scroll
Full refresh It it goes a whole page down. Even whether you like do a lot or do or do a little
It goes one page down. You can't like go in increments. Oh
Change it There's the notes app. Okay. We're in color mode
And how does this feel the feel is kind of nice. It does not feel like a normal display. There's a little bit of scratch to it
I wouldn't say it's nearly as paper-like
as the remarkable screen or like
something with a paper-like Screen protector no free cloud take that out
Editor leave that in Whoa, look at that. Look at that delay. It's processing. It's like wait
Where are you going? Take me with you. No
My question is my question is why can't they put like a little bit better of a processor in there?
I mean, it's probably like one of the most expensive parts if not the most expensive
But like that's a little frustrating if I if I erase everything that I did
If I erase everything I've ever done Well, it's still wow that's taken a while. It was something about that tool
Very responsive with like a more basic kind of is a ballpoint pen and green
And it's gone every time I'm you expect an eraser just to erase the part of like a like part of what you're doing
This is this is like seems to be a theme with these e-ink devices. It's like you never know when you go to erase
Oh, here we go. There's different modes here lasso eraser. Oh, is this going to be it?
Yes, there we go. So there's a different eraser mode where you can erase part of it
Anyway, there's a decent amount of depth here in the amount of tools that you can you can have
It's that time even though it is an e-paper display
It has a pretty good color display. Oh, look at that. Is that how a video is going to look?
I think so. We have no choice but to crab rave so far
I'm pretty happy with how much like a normal
Android device using this feels and we are in fast refresh rate mode
So the colors could be a little bit better than this
I'm guessing it's capable of that But I think if you go into that like more a color high color fidelity mode
Then it's going to start flickering. I don't know if I even want to do this guys
Sounds like a tamagotchi. Yeah, those speakers are not good. Uh
I think I don't know what else to tell you You're you're not going to get a device like this for the speakers
The speakers are there if you really need to watch a video that somebody sent you and it's got sound
You can play the sound You can play the sound, but it's not going to sound good now playing video is actually how our Labs team did the battery discharge test
and It lasted six hours
Which is not very long For a phone these days. You're expecting it to have more like all-day battery life
However, this display this kind of e-paper display the way that it displays things is by moving physical particles around on the display
So it's going to take more energy to play video
Continuously than you know one of these other traditional displays that are geared towards play video
Now brace yourself because once they discharged the battery completely they did a full zero to a hundred
Battery charge test using our standard 45 watt charger. However, the books pama 2 pro did not care how much wattage
It was being fed because it only wanted to use 10 watts
and so it took three hours
and 17 minutes to charge the
3950 milliamp hour battery and that's just too long. I'm sorry
Now that is playing video. As I said, it takes a lot of battery when you're doing normal e-ink e-paper type stuff
People are you know who've been using this posting online about it or talking about you know a week of battery life possibly more
So, you know, you won't have to charge it for three hours uh that often or ever if you kind of like
Do some power sipping charging in the middle of the day But it is something that you will have to be aware of that like if you're like oops
I forgot to charge you can't just like do a quick charge like it's gonna take a while you're gonna be there for a while
Do some reading now against all recommendations devices like these are putting cameras on board
uh I I shouldn't be sassy like that. Like I said, it's nice to have a device like this that can do anything
That a Android device could do just uh poorly
Just to have it, you know because then we have it say say cheese
Got the 16 megapixel camera and now I'm doing my my this is my standard photo test
I don't know if you've seen me do this before Mel. Oh, yeah
And I won't be able to tell what those look like until uh, the editor gets them
So, uh, you let me know in the comments. How do they look probably not great?
It's not it's not lagging horribly like it's it's to the point where I can
I can do it and I don't feel like I'm getting sick There's a selfie cam button, but there's no selfie cam on this device. It's just taunting me like remember
Remember, this is not a phone. We talked about this I I'm happy to see that uh chrome supports kind of smooth scrolling instead of like jumping down by pages
You know in some ways despite me saying that
The way forward the way to not have brain rot is
It's not a hardware solution despite me saying that using this thing. I kind of want to use it as my phone
The minimal phone was like a very distinct experience. It was like listen, you have a problem
Okay, it was Android it ran Android so it
You know could do some stuff like this although it had its own skin on it
You could still install apps and try to use it like another kind of Android phone
But it was like it was still just kind of clunky this with the high refresh rate and the color
and the familiar settings menus and stuff instead of like minimal zone sort of like
custom skin This feels this felt pretty good. So in some ways, I'm a little sad that this does not have the capability to
Make phone calls or make or do text messages, which I still sometimes do I admit it now
That said despite this very much Feeling like using a normal Android device these companies are still putting very weak hardware in here
It does have 128 gigs of storage to start
and you can actually expand that up to two terabytes with the
SD card combo SIM tray thingy. It's got that weak CPU. We talked about it's only got eight gigs of RAM
Uh, which is now in 2025 not very much for a phone
And so for a daily driver it probably would still be frustrating and then we're back into this whole like
Do you want your phone to be frustrating? Maybe you want your phone to be frustrating so that you use it less
But again, I don't think it's a hardware issue. I think it is a
Self-control thing and I think it's also a platform thing We need to we need to make these platforms less brain rotty
Because I don't want to use a crappy phone
Especially for $400 which is like you can get a pretty decent budget phone for around that ballpark these days
So it's $400 for the books palma 2 pro
It's $46 for the books incense plus
Um, which I will say I like to the experience of that, you know taking this on the go
Taking notes annotating your screen saving it reading and I've said this on other videos
And I apologize to anyone who's about to hear this, but I already read ebooks on my phone on my regular phone
Uh in dark mode. Okay, so reading on an e
Uh paper screen this small I'm fine with it. I'm also fine if you subscribe to the ShortCircuit
Hey, uh, if you are interested in watching another video, perhaps you could consider watching a previous video
Hosted by me, which is the remarkable paper. Uh pro move
Which is $450 Books palma 2 pro poof palma 2 pro
Open up books and give it a go when you're reading the books. Everything is so fine
Just don't get it all the way to the end of the line