[Markoff]

who would want to read anything on 4.2" display?

I've had bigger (4.5") display in smartphone 8 years ago and I would not call even that suitable for reading books

why is nobody discussing this and why they don't show the device in hand to show how ridiculously small it is?

> Main features: > 4.2" inch e-paper display with partial refresh, driven over a dedicated SPI bus.

https://github.com/joeycastillo/The-Open-Book

[efreak]

I did all my (non-school) reading for my first half of college on a Nintendo DSi, before I got a tablet. High resolution, large screen, good backlight, fast display refresh rate--all of these improve the experience, but none of them is required, and if you've never used them then all you know is this is so much better than reading on my laptop. Sure, having a small screen is a little frustrating, but having easy buttons to change pages makes up for it (the DSi RL buttons were better than all tablets I've ever had) and once you get into your reading, you stop noticing.

Tips:

- set the background color as close as you can to the bezel color, and remove the margins if you have a small screen - Set the font size a little large if you have a low resolution screen; antialiasing makes it much easier to read, even if your screen is also small.

Tips if your device has a slow processor and little ram (I had all or most of this automated at the time, through a batch file and a custom calibre conversion profile)

- resize or remove images. I stored mine alongside the book rather than in it, saved as smaller 8bit PNG files. - split your ebooks into multiple files (~100kb/file without images allowed pages to load in <1/2 second) - Make sure the files in your epub are actually split by chapter (calibre can do this automatically, I think) - if you have control over file compression (I use a script to generate epubs), don't use high compression--especially if there's images.

[Markoff]

you are ruining your eyesight by using such small display/letters and fixed focused distance, it may not look like that when you are young, but give it few years and you will see results

4.2" is OK for temporary reading for very short periods, but ebooks are usually used for long reading sessions and one would want to use it for years before throwing away