Xteink has revealed the Xteink S4, yet another tiny e-reader in its ever-growing stable. Were it that this was just another small e-reader from the up-and-coming Chinese brand, then we might not bother covering it.
But the S4 is something a little bit special, because it’s cracked the Holy Grail of tiny e-readers: It runs Android.
The Xteink S4 is for people who can’t live without Kindle
You can’t buy one yet, though
I’m a huge fan of tiny e-readers. I love the way they can fit into a pocket with another phone, and accompany you on your adventures.
The appeal is obvious — they’re so small you can whip it out at a moment’s notice, avoiding doomscrolling on your phone, and sinking into a good book instead.
But all of them, from Xteink’s finest, to Boox’s new Picco, share one problem: Because they don’t run Android, they can’t run the Kindle app. Instead, you have to sideload content from your own stash of e-books, and this makes them difficult to recommend to anyone whose e-books are stuck on Amazon’s servers.
The solution is to create a tiny e-reader that runs Android. But that’s easier said than done, because Android is fairly resource-heavy, and needs more hardware than you’d think. And tiny e-readers are, well, tiny. They don’t have the internal space for the sort of specs modern Android needs.
So how has Xteink got around this with the Xteink S4? Easy, it’s running Android 11, an operating system that’s been out-of-date since 2021.
As such, it has lower demands than more modern Android builds. However, it’s still far more demanding than the Linux OS Xteink has run before, which is why the S4 is the most powerful device we’ve seen from Xteink.
The S4 is packing 2GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. That may not sound like much, but it’s leagues more powerful than the Xteink X4 Pro, which only has 8MB of RAM and a 16GB microSD card.
Quite how well Android runs on the pint-size device will remain to be seen, but the other specs do seem solid. The display is a 4.3-inch E-ink touchscreen, with a temperature-adjustable cool and warm front light, and it comes with button controls too. The traditional MagSafe magnets are also included, along with a USB-C port, and a much larger 1,400mAh battery.
At the moment, it seems you’ll need to sideload your reading apps onto the device, rather than using the Google Play Store. But that could just be because it’s currently China-only.
Ah yes, that’s an important point. Right now, the Xteink S4 is China-only. But it’s expected the device will launch internationally within the next few months.
The price isn’t known yet, but it’s being sold in China for the equivalent of $50. Don’t expect it to come to the US at that price.
Given the much higher specs, I wouldn’t expect the Xteink S4 to cost much less than $200, though that’s just speculation. Hopefully Xteink can pull the price down further than that, because if it does, it might have a hit on its hands. Even a basic Kindle now costs $150, which is a ludicrous price for a basic e-reader.
Regardless of the price though, we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one. Everyone wants a tiny e-reader with the ability to run the Kindle app, and hopefully, Xteink is about to deliver.
