Tiny E-Reader Is the Best Piece of Technology in Years - The Atlantic

I’m glad it got the author of this article to read more, but there’s no real mention of why someone would use this instead of the myriad phone apps for reading already in existence, including the one that you have to download special software to get to run on this thing.

The TikTokification cannot be much different between this and a phone screen. You can only fit a few sentences on a phone screen in the first place, so I can’t imagine there’s a real change even when you halve the size.

Traditional ereaders have a place for a variety of reasons and this seems to go against everything someone would want in an ereader. I really just don’t understand this product and there was nothing that helped explain it’s purpose in contrast to the phone it’s presumably going to be attached to. Really wish they bothered to address that point at all.

While I agree that this sounds like all the drawbacks of an ereader with none of the bonuses of a phone, I think compartmentalisation is a pretty big factor. If the back of your phone is for reading, some people will be less likely to get distracted while their phone is flipped over - even though they’re literally holding the likely source of their distraction.