My newsletter’s open rates are in crisis, so I might as well write a phone unboxing review and compete with the influencers for business.

Just kidding. It’s true that my readership has dropped, but as an “i-person”, there’s no way I’d start fighting with influencers for traffic. The truth is, I’m going to be writing a “BYOL – Build Your Own Library” series. It will cover all aspects of building and managing a personal library, from buying books to storing and publishing them. This time, I’m starting with hardware, a topic I’ve rarely touched on before.

Three months ago, the Bigme Hibreak Pro was released, and I bought it without a second thought. It cost me HK$3,299. I’ve been using it for over two months now, so while this might not qualify as a deep-dive review, it’s at least a genuine sharing of my experience after extensive use.

First, a simple introduction: The Bigme Hibreak Pro is a black-and-white Android phone. And by black-and-white, I don’t mean the phone’s casing, but its screen—or to be precise, it’s black, white, and gray. More importantly, unlike the OLED screens used in the vast majority of smartphones, the Hibreak Pro uses an e-ink screen. I occasionally set my iPad to grayscale mode, but that doesn’t replicate the e-ink effect. Conversely, color e-ink screens have been out for years, but they are nowhere near as detailed or vibrant as OLED.

So, why would I give up a perfectly good color-screen phone and “drive in reverse” by using a black-and-white one? You can’t really call it going backward, since black-and-white smartphones didn’t exist before anyway. Ads and influencers will usually tell you that e-ink is better for your eyes because it has no blue light. I don’t disagree, but I’ll explain it from a more intuitive angle: OLED pixels emit their own light, whereas e-ink reflects ambient light. The former is like the sun; the latter is like the moon. Which do you think is more comfortable to stare at? You often hear about “moon-gazing,” but I’ve never heard of anyone “sun-gazing.” The iPhone 16 Pro has a screen resolution of 2622×1206. Staring at an iPhone is like staring at over three million microscopic suns. It’s quite terrifying when you think about it.

Because of this difference, the characteristics of OLED and e-ink screens are almost polar opposites. Even with the highest-end iPhone models, it’s a struggle to see the screen clearly in bright sunlight. And when you can see it, the screen is vying with the sun for brightness, making it especially harsh on the eyes. E-ink is the opposite; it’s exceptionally clear in daylight. If people in Hong Kong have ever noticed the public parking meters, you’ll find their screens are incredibly clear during the day—precisely because they use e-ink. But a needle isn’t sharp at both ends. Conversely, in low light or at night, you have to rely on an external light source to see an e-ink screen. In this respect, the Bigme Hibreak Pro has built-in cold and warm front lights, each with 36 levels of brightness. While reading under the covers isn’t exactly healthy, at least you’re not staring at a sun in the dark. The effect is closer to reading a paper book with a reading lamp.

Besides being easy on the eyes, another major advantage of e-ink is its power efficiency. In a static state, it uses zero power; it only consumes energy when the screen changes. This means when you’re reading a book, it uses no power while you’re reading, only when you turn the page. By the same logic, I set a wallpaper without a clock as my lock screen, and the phone consumes absolutely no power when idle. I only need to charge it once every three days. I must re-emphasize that this is my personal, real-world experience. Please don’t buy it just because I said the battery lasts three days and then blame me if your experience differs. Although some might feel it doesn’t fit my persona, I’m not a heavy phone user. I mainly use it for Signal, Proton Mail, maps, reading books and articles, and listening to YouTube (yes, listening).

The characteristics mentioned above apply to other e-ink phones as well. You could say I’m introducing e-ink technology more than the Hibreak Pro itself. The problem is that e-ink phones are extremely rare; there are hardly any “others.” And the bad news is that almost all of them are produced by Chinese companies, including Bigme. If you can’t accept this “original sin,” it’s very difficult to find a suitable e-ink phone.

I’ve been using e-ink readers and phones for a long time and have closely followed their development. I bought the Hibreak Pro as soon as it came out. It wasn’t an impulse buy or a slip of the hand; I had been waiting for a phone with this exact positioning for a long time. It might sound like my needs are very specific, but it’s quite the opposite: all I wanted was a standard Android experience paired with an e-ink screen. Yet, other manufacturers always seem to over-design, being overly “thoughtful” on behalf of the user. For example, Light Phone “gutted” Android to the point where it has almost no features, only allowing calls and texts (a phone without Signal is useless to me; I know how to exercise self-discipline, I don’t need you to castrate its functions). The Minimal Phone‘s Android is fairly standard, but they made the fatal mistake of using a physical keyboard, which cuts the screen size in half and makes it difficult to read. The Hisense Hi Reader Pro I used before was closer to my needs, but its Android was a mainland China version, requiring me to root the device and mess around just to get Google Play. It was also “Mainland Chinese to the bone” (if you know what I mean), making it unsuitable as a daily driver. It wasn’t until the Hibreak Pro, aimed at the overseas market, was released with a near-stock Android 14 and some built-in apps, that I was finally able to use a phone that both has Google Play to let me choose my own apps and has a simple, high-contrast black-and-white e-ink screen. A phone with just the right amount of features—my soft resistance against the dominance of the iPhone and hyper-fragmented social media apps.

I’ve watched some YouTubers review the Hibreak Pro, and more than one has framed it as a “7-day challenge” or something similar, performing a real-life test to see if they can survive a week with this black-and-white screen phone. Either these YouTubers are being overly dramatic, or I’m just too detached from modern urban life. Forget seven days—I’ve used the Hibreak Pro continuously for over two months and haven’t felt like I was undergoing a challenge at all. On the contrary, I’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable, rediscovering that long-lost feeling of excitement over a new phone model.

To avoid painting the Hibreak Pro as too perfect and raising expectations, I must say this might just be a case of a peculiar phone meeting a peculiar person. I abandoned Instagram years ago, I don’t install many apps, and I enjoy sitting in outdoor cafes or even parks, writing with a Bluetooth keyboard connected to my phone. Perhaps in the eyes of a passerby, I look like a relic left behind by the times, a security guard who spends his workdays watching old black-and-white Cantonese movies (plus, I have a t-shirt with “Security” printed in large letters on the back).

So, is the Hibreak Pro my perfect phone? Of course not. Before I conclude, let me list a few shortcomings to provide some balance and so you don’t mistake this for a sponsored post. First, the most troubling issue for me is that after updating the firmware to v2.2.6 two weeks ago, Google Wallet now flags the phone as rooted and unsafe. None of the credit cards in my wallet work. I still don’t know if this is Bigme’s blunder or a false positive from Google. In any case, I hope it gets resolved soon. Otherwise, being unable to use it for tap-to-pay is not just about having to carry an extra credit card; it also prevents me from using several of my crypto cards that have no physical version.

Second is a common ailment of e-ink devices: it’s difficult to distinguish between colors of similar shades. This isn’t a problem in most cases, but when a few apps have user interfaces that rely heavily on color—like the red, blue, and green lines of a transit map—it becomes quite challenging to use. A similar situation occurs with photography. Unless you’re intentionally trying to shoot in black and white, the screen makes it hard to see your composition clearly. However, this is only an issue when framing the shot; the photos themselves come out in normal color. In fact, the cover photos for my newsletter for the past two months were all taken with this “black-and-white camera.” While it can’t compare to an iPhone, unless you have a highly discerning eye for photography, you probably won’t find them terrible.

In conclusion, for the Bigme Hibreak Pro, the good outweighs the bad. This unremarkable yet unique phone, despite its rough edges, offers a precious alternative outside the mainstream. It’s the closest thing to my dream phone that exists.

P.S. One more thing, though I’m not sure if it’s a feature or a bug, especially for an introvert. The Hibreak Pro is a fantastic icebreaker. In just over two months, I’ve been asked about my phone by strangers multiple times. Someone said I was using a children’s phone, another asked what app I installed to get that effect, and people taking photos for me have been startled by the black-and-white screen. In short, they all find it novel, which in turn starts a conversation. If you go to a bar and put a Hibreak Pro on the table, I guarantee you’ll meet new people. The iPhone? It’s long been played out. Who cares about it anyway?