My Pocket PC (PPC) Adventures: BigMe Hibreak Black/White

Year 2025: BigMe Hibreak Black/White

After deciding that the light loss on the color e-ink of my 2020 Hisense A5 Pro CC (HLTE203T) was a bit much, I got a BigMe Hibreak monochrome (black/white) non-Pro (no alias) [specs] [shop] [manual] [xda1] [xda2] in 2025-06, with Android 11 (API 30) including Google Play, which enables banking apps. Once more, the e-ink screen is wonderful, with a much higher contrast than my previous color e-ink display, which keeps me at reading books instead of internet browsing. The Pro version would be more powerful but the display even larger (6.1" vs 5.8"), too much for my pant pockets.

A configurable side button on the left side can be set e.g. to back button for one click, screen refresh for double click, and flashlight for long click. Hardware buttons at the bottom will probably never be en vogue again. The Hibreak has the exact same size, thickness, and screen bevels of the A5 Pro CC, except the main camera which protrudes a bit. Battery life is ok (more than 1 day) but nowhere near the A5 Pro CC, at least when 1-minute clock update interval is set for an equivalent standby display.

BigMe Hibreak Black/White Evaluation
BigMe Hibreak Black/White Pro:
  • E-ink
  • Better contrast than color e-ink
  • Compass in addition to GPS
Contra:
  • Too large at 5.8"
  • Non-removable battery
  • Only one hardware button
Bugs:
  • Widgets have ugly extra frames
  • Incomplete i18n
  • Recovery Boot (Pw+VolDn) fails
  • USB adb fails

Shopping was actually a bit bumpy; bought at 250€ in their web store, I was required to phone the DHL customs office and pay another 50€ customs fee upon delivery. On the bright side, the BigMe after sales team was accomodating and reimbursed me 30€ of that, so I can attest to their goodwill. One could conceivably ask them if they have the phone in stock in your country before ordering.

After using it for about half a year, two experiences stick out: From a snappiness perspective, the Hibreak feels notably slower than my A5 Pro CC, and some webpages have colors schemes that do not work well with black/white screens, tempering the superb book reading experience a bit. For developers, having only wireless but no USB adb is not nice but ok, see below for more details. What worries me more is the inability to factory reset.

My Settings: BigMe Hibreak

First step is going to Settings and see what we can do here to strip the system back to what I actually need.

Note that for some reason, "USB debugging" turns itself off quite frequently.

In Settings→Apps we can disable unused apps. Sometimes disabling is impossible, or only a permanent uninstall for apps we might need later; right now we omit most of those.

For the rest, we take the developer route with adb.

My ADB: BigMe Hibreak

Using adb (stand-alone per apt-get install adb or from Android SDK) is the next step to disable unwanted apps. For the life of me, I could not get adb devices to work on the USB-connected Hibreak. Normally lsusb gives a 0e8d:2008 kind of number where the first is idVendor and the second idProduct, which would yield an Android rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/ (as root) like this:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e8d", ATTR{idProduct}=="2008", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

A reboot and re-plugin of the phone and adb devices should list the Hibreak, but it doesnt. Scouring the internet on adb and plugdev [docs1] [docs2] [forum1] [forum2] did not help either. I got the sneaking suspicion the Bigme devs never used it and didnt bother to properly implement USB debug accces.

Because wireless debug access does work! In Settings→More Settings→Advanced→Developer, do Wireless debugging = on, then click it again because the label is also a menu. Under these choose "Pair device with pairing code", which will give you an IP, a port and a pin.

On your computer, adb pair 192.168.100.23:34327 315692 (just an example) should give you a success message. Now first make sure that your Android SDK has Android 11 installed, e.g. via Android Studio→Tools→SDK manager in the toolbar. Only after that, go adb connect 192.168.100.23:34327 then adb shell and then pm list packages | sort to arrive at the full package list.

Before we go disabling apps per adb, sideload F-Droid with adb install F-Droid.apk to install new default apps on the phone:

Those are the packages I disabled in adb shell.

pm disable-user --user 0 cn.wps.moffice_i18n
pm disable-user --user 0 ru.vk.store
pm disable-user --user 0 com.b300.xrz.web
pm disable-user --user 0 com.ebook.imagemanager
pm disable-user --user 0 com.ebook.wifitransferbook
pm disable-user --user 0 com.eusoft.eudic
pm disable-user --user 0 com.example.test
pm disable-user --user 0 com.iflytek.speechcloud
pm disable-user --user 0 com.socialnmobile.colordict
pm disable-user --user 0 com.sohu.inputmethod.sogou.oem
pm disable-user --user 0 com.tencent.weread.eink
pm disable-user --user 0 com.test.logcollect
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.ai
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.appmanager
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.ebook
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.bookmall
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.bookself
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.btranslate
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.dictapp
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.filemanager
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.googleguide
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.hoverballdemo
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.scandoc
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.soundrecord
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.video
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.voice.note
pm disable-user --user 0 com.xrz.xreaderV3

# Experimentally found that those must stay on:
com.xrz.ebook.launcher

# Did not dare:
com.xrz.mutidisplay
com.xrz.res.service
com.xrz.settings
com.xrz.standby
com.xrz.sys.control

Confirm with pm list packages -d |sort [forum] that the packages are indeed disabled. Reboot for good measure.

Some app icons still remain on the home screen. With long-click and remove/uninstall, I can shoo away Calculator, ColorDict, Google Cloud, Google Drive, Music, WPS office lite. What remains are "dead icons" for App management, BigmeGPT, Bigme V2T, BookShelf, Browser, Calendar, Dictionary, Gallery, Navigation Ball, Scan Document, Translator, Voice Recorder; and "unkillable apps" App store, Contacts, File manager, Lock screen, Messaging, Phone, Screen saver; I push them into respective icon groups.

I cannot get rid of the "Search bar" on the rightmost desktop nor the "Add widget" button on the leftmost desktop. And the clock widget on the home desktop seems also here to stay. To remedy this, it might help to start disabling com.android packages, but that might also be unwise, particularly since fastboot with Power+VolumeDown does not seem to work, and adb reboot bootloader just freezes the device.

My Apps: BigMe Hibreak

After the basics are done, here comes the F-Droid install spree:

A big surprise are the widgets. The usual long-click on home desktop, then add widget, does not work. Instead, on the leftmost desktop, there is a big "+ Add widget" button that does add widgets, but with an ugly frame around each of them. I am entirely not sure why the Bigme devs deviated from the stock Android experience here.

Open Questions

One could conceivably try to get some answers from the Bigme after sales team, which I suppose could talk to their developers.

So far, I am medium happy with the Hibreak. The screen is superb, but the software is, charitably speaking, at least incomplete -- I hope you could get a developer-y impression here. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!

EOF (Jan:2026)