The Life S3, Honor’s first e-ink reader, has gone on sale in China. It comes just as Honor launched the Magic 9 phones. It is a 3.68-inch reader that attaches to the back of a phone with a magnet, and it enters a small category that the e-ink makers Xteink and Boox already sell into.
Honor’s recommended launch price is about USD 59 or KES 7,700, which undercuts every rival in the table below. JD, the Chinese retailer, listed it at about USD 53 or KES 6,900.
The S3 uses e-ink, the paper-like screen used in Kindles, which draws power only when the page changes and so lets the battery last days. Its screen is 3.68 inches at 259 pixels per inch (PPI), the number of dots in each inch, which decides how sharp text looks. Honor’s spec sheet gives the body as 100.6 x 66.4 x 5.6mm and about 61g, with a 650mAh battery rated for up to 30 hours of continuous offline reading, or about a week per charge. A tap on the screen turns the page, so there are no page-turn buttons, although a function key and a power key sit on the side.
Beyond the hardware, the S3 does not run Android. The spec sheet lists an RTOS, a real-time operating system, which is a lightweight system built for single-purpose devices. Honor’s watches already run their own operating system. Book titles come from JD Read, the e-book service of the same retailer, which has more than 700,000 licensed titles.
Furthermore, you can load your own files. The reader opens EPUB, PDF, MOBI, DOC, DOCX and TXT, and it takes a microSD card of up to 1TB. Internal storage is only 16MB. Files can also arrive through Honor’s Smart Space app over Wi-Fi 6, on the 2.4GHz band only.
When you buy the phone, the box it comes with holds the reader, a magnetic ring, a USB-C cable, a screen protector and a manual.
Honor Life S3 versus Xteink vs Boox
Xteink already sells magnetic pocket readers, and Boox has one on pre-order.
| Reader | Screen | PPI | Weight | Touchscreen | Page buttons | Front light | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Honor Life S3 | 3.68in | 259 | 61g | Yes | No | Not listed | About USD 59 (KES 7,700; CNY 399) |
| Xteink X3 | 3.7in | 259 | 58g | No | Yes | No | USD 69 on sale (KES 8,900); USD 79 regular (KES 10,200) |
| Xteink X4 Classic | 4.3in | 219 | 68g | No | Yes | No | USD 79 on sale (KES 10,200); USD 89 regular (KES 11,500) |
| Xteink X4 Pro | 4.3in | 219 | 72g | Yes | Yes | Yes | USD 99 on sale (KES 12,800); USD 109 regular (KES 14,100) |
| Boox Picco | 3.97in | 235 | 58g | Yes | Yes | Yes | From USD 99.99 (KES 13,000) |
Honor currently sells in Kenya through authorised resellers. In August the Magic V6 foldable reached Kenya at KES 312,999 through importers. The company has named no market or date beyond China for the S3.
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