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Thursday, April 24, 2025

Bigme B7 is a big news for me

 My question is: will it have an SD slot for 1 TB cards like Bigme B741C?

For a long time it was pretty easy to tell the difference between a general-purpose tablet and an eReader. Devices with E Ink displays like Kindle or Kobo products were meant for reading eBooks, while devices with full-color displays and high-refresh rates like iPads and Samsung Galaxy tablets were general-purpose devices.

But in recent years the line between those categories has gotten blurry. E Ink color displays are a thing now, and many device makers have found ways to increase the screen refresh rates on E Ink tablets (although not without making sacrifices on image quality). Some models have support for stylus input, Android-based software with support for third-party apps. And some even have cameras for snapping pictures. The new Bigme B7 has all of those features… plus a 4G LTE modem for data and phone calls.

Bigme introduced the color E Ink tablet on Chinese social media in March, and it’s now available for pre-order for $229 from the Bigme store (marked down from a suggested retail price of $299), with an estimated ship date of May 10, 2025.

Features include a 7 inch E Ink Kaleido 3  color display with a resolution of 1264 x 1680 pixels (or 300 pixels per inch) when viewing black and white content or 632 x 840 pixels (150 ppi) for color.

There’s also support for a stylus which is said to feature wireless charging and 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity… but it’s also referred to as a capacitive stylus in the “product parameters” section of the Bigme website, so it’s unclear if this is an active or passive stylus.

The Bigme B7 runs an Android-based operating system, an unspecified 2.3 GHz MediaTek octa-core processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of built-in storage.

The tablet has  a thick bezel on one side, featuring physical page turn buttons. There’s also a USB-C port and speaker along one edge, and a 5MP camera with an LED flash on the back.

The most unusual feature is the 4G LTE modem which provides support for both data and phone calls over a cellular network. That’s… not something you find on most tablets, and I’m honestly not sure how much demand there is for it.

But Bigme has been making eBook readers and eNotes with E Ink displays for a while now, and last year the company introduced its first smartphone – the Bigme HiBreak Pro features a 6.13 inch E Ink display and support for 4G and 5G networks. So the company already has some experience putting cellular modems into devices with ePaper displays… maybe somebody at headquarters figured why not try putting one into a device with a larger screen?

I haven’t seen any information about which 4G LTE network bands the Bigme B7 supports though, so it’s unclear how useful it will be as a phone or cellular-enabled tablet outside of China. The price tag is reasonable enough though that limited network support might not be a dealbreaker though – even as a WiFi-only device, the Bigme B7 offers a 7 inch color E Ink display, pen support, and more memory and storage than you’d typically find in an eReader in the sub-$300 price range.

Other features include a microSD card slot and a nano SIM card reader, a 3,000  mAh battery, and OCR software that lets you use the rear camera as a document scanner.

The Bigme B& supports dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 and the tablet measures 156.6 x 138.6 x 5.8mm (6.2″ x 5.5″ x 0.2″) and weighs 215 grams (7.6 ounces).

via ITHome and Nate Hoffelder

This article was first published March 26, 2025 and most recently updated April 7, 2025.

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