Close the cover, keep listening. The screen sleeps; your podcast doesn't.
The Boox Palma occupies an unusual position in the landscape of personal technology — a phone-shaped e-ink reader that promises liberation from the scroll while quietly inheriting the compromises of battery-first design philosophy. Like many tools that try to serve two masters, it requires its owner to negotiate between what the device was optimized for and what daily life actually demands. Three deliberate adjustments to its default settings are all that stand between a frustrating limitation and a device that finally listens — in every sense of the word.
- A device that looks and runs like a smartphone inexplicably pauses audio and drops Bluetooth the moment its screen goes dark, breaking the basic contract users expect from modern Android hardware.
- The friction is systemic: the Palma's operating system aggressively freezes background apps and severs wireless connections by default, treating battery longevity as the supreme value above all else.
- Three separate settings menus must each be visited — enabling background activity for audio apps, disabling per-app or global freezing, and instructing Bluetooth to stay connected through sleep — none of which are surfaced intuitively.
- Each fix carries a quiet cost: every toggle toward convenience is a toggle away from the extended battery life that makes e-ink devices appealing in the first place.
- After roughly five minutes of configuration, the Palma crosses the threshold from specialized curiosity to a device that can genuinely accompany a listener through a commute, a walk, or a long night of audiobooks.
The Boox Palma is a phone-shaped e-ink reader running Android — a device designed to make you read more and scroll less. It belongs to no single retailer's ecosystem, which is part of its appeal. But it carries a frustrating quirk that feels out of place on a modern device: close the cover, and it doesn't just dim the screen — it kills Bluetooth and stops whatever audio was playing.
For anyone accustomed to listening to podcasts or audiobooks on a regular smartphone, this feels like regression. The Palma looks like a phone and runs like one, but the gap between that appearance and its actual behavior is where the irritation lives.
The fix requires three separate visits to the settings menu. First, audio apps must be individually granted permission to stay active in the background — a privilege the Palma OS withholds by default in the name of battery conservation. Second, the device's app-freezing feature, which suspends background processes to save power, must be disabled either per app or globally, with an optional setting to prevent newly installed apps from being frozen automatically. Third, Bluetooth must be instructed to remain connected after the screen sleeps, and optionally set to activate automatically on startup.
Each of these changes nudges the device away from its factory-default posture of maximum battery preservation and toward something more livable. The trade-off is real — battery life will shorten — but the reward is a Palma that finally behaves like the audio companion it appeared to be. It remains a specialized tool rather than a full smartphone replacement, but five minutes in the settings menu is a small price for a device that stops interrupting the story.
The Boox Palma is a strange and wonderful device—a phone-shaped e-ink reader that sits somewhere between a smartphone and a dedicated reading tablet, locked to no single retailer's walled garden. It's the kind of thing that makes you read more and scroll less, which is precisely why many people buy it. But it also comes with quirks that feel oddly anachronistic for a device running Android in 2025. The most frustrating of these quirks is deceptively simple: the Palma won't play audio with its screen off without some coaxing.
For anyone who has spent years listening to audiobooks, podcasts, or music on a regular smartphone, this limitation feels like a step backward. Close the protective cover, and the screen goes dark—which is fine. But the device also kills the Bluetooth connection and pauses whatever audio was playing. It's the kind of friction that shouldn't exist on a modern Android device, yet here it is. The Palma looks like a phone and runs like a phone, but it doesn't always behave like one, and that gap between expectation and reality is where the frustration lives.
The good news is that the fix exists. It just requires three separate trips into the settings menu, each one toggling a different battery-preservation feature that the Palma's operating system enables by default. The first step is to tell the device that audio apps are allowed to keep running in the background. By default, the Palma OS disables this for every app downloaded from the Google Play Store, a choice made in the name of battery life. To change it, long-press any audio app's icon on the home screen, tap Optimize, navigate to the Others tab, and toggle the Stay active in the background slider to On. It's a small thing, but it's necessary.
The second adjustment involves the Palma's app-freezing feature, which is exactly what it sounds like: the OS automatically suspends apps running in the background to preserve power. Again, this is a sensible default for a device with an e-ink screen and limited battery capacity. But it also means your audiobook app gets frozen mid-playback. You can disable freezing on a per-app basis by going to Settings, then Apps and Notifications, then Freeze Settings, and turning off the toggle for each audio app individually. Or you can go nuclear and disable freezing globally by toggling Do not freeze apps running in the background. There's also an option to prevent the Palma from automatically enabling freezing on newly installed apps, which saves you from having to repeat this step every time you download something new.
The third and final piece is keeping Bluetooth alive after the screen goes dark. Navigate to Settings, then Power, then tap Bluetooth Status After Sleep and select Stay Connected. While you're in that menu, you might also want to enable Always turn Bluetooth on when the device starts up, so you don't have to manually reconnect your headphones every time you power on the Palma. Both of these choices will cost you some battery life, which is the real trade-off here: the Palma's defaults prioritize longevity over convenience, and these tweaks swing the pendulum back toward convenience.
Once all three settings are adjusted, the Palma finally behaves like the audio device you expected it to be. Close the cover, keep listening. The screen sleeps; your podcast doesn't. It's a small victory, but it's the kind of small victory that makes the difference between a device that fits into your life and one that constantly reminds you of its limitations. The Palma is still a specialized tool, and these settings changes are a reminder that it's not quite a smartphone replacement—not yet, anyway. But for anyone willing to spend five minutes in the settings menu, it becomes something much closer.
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does a modern Android device need this much configuration just to play audio with the screen off?
The Palma is optimized for reading, not for being a phone. Every battery-saving feature is turned on by default because the assumption is that you're mostly looking at text on an e-ink screen. Audio playback is almost an afterthought.
So the device is making assumptions about how you'll use it?
Exactly. It assumes you want maximum battery life above all else. But if you want to use it like a phone—which it physically resembles—you have to override those assumptions manually.
Is this a design flaw, or just a different philosophy?
It's a philosophy. The Palma's makers are saying: we built this for reading. If you want to do other things, you can, but you'll need to tell us that's what you want.
And once you make these changes, does it work reliably?
Yes. It becomes exactly what you'd expect from any Android device. But you have to know to make the changes in the first place, and most people won't stumble onto them by accident.
What's the cost of making these changes?
Battery life. You're telling the device to keep apps awake and keep Bluetooth running. It's a trade-off, and the device is honest about it—but you have to choose which matters more to you.