Archive for the ‘eink’ tag
The “Real” iTablet Reveals Itself; e-Ink News no comments
While the press debates whether or not the iPad will make dedicated ereaders obsolete, the iPad is itself coming under increased pressure from newly announced tablets. The battlefields of the tablet wars are getting almost as crowded as those of the nearby ereader wars. Of course none of the other combatants has the Apple brand or the app store behind them, though one of them apparently does have the temerity to copy Apple’s naming conventions.
Electricpig has the goods on the iTablet by X2 Computing. This new iWannabe will run Windows 7 and come with a 250GB hard drive. It also comes with a few features that the iPad is famously missing such as a webcam and USB ports. The iTablet will come with screen sizes of 10.2 inches and 12.1 inches, and is a rather bulky 1.38 inches thick.
It is beginning to look as though any company capable of making a toaster will have either a tablet or an ereader to market by the end of the year.
e-Ink Expanding Production and Features in 2010
Meanwhile Prime View International, which makes e-Ink displays, doesn’t seem to be a believer in the prophesies of coming ereader obsolescence.
Digitimes reports that PVI is increasing its production capacity, which will enable the company to triple its output of e-ink, e-paper films and back-end modules by the end of the year.
PVI also plans to introduce flexible and color e-ink displays this year. Touchscreens and e-ink displays with a response time fast enough to support animation are also in the works.
PVI chairman Scott Liu is quoted as saying that he expects ereader shipments to possibly exceed 10 million units globally in 2010, with over 50 new vendors expected to launch ereaders this year.
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Fujitsu’s FLEPia; Worlds first color ebook reader no comments
Fujitsu’s FLEPia, the world’s first color ebook reader has recently gone on sale in Japan. FLEPia uses Fujitsu’s flexible color electronic paper which works by slowly rewriting the next page over the previous one.
The feature set is impressive, and it better be for the $1000 + price tag. FLEPia currently comes in both A4 and A5 versions, weighing 320g and 480g, and sporting 8” and 12” screens respectively. Both models are 12 millimeters thick. The unit can display up to 260,000 colors, is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a touch screen which has a resolution of 1024 x 768. An SD card (up to 4 GB) is used to store books purchased from the online bookstore Papyless. The keyboard is on-screen. FLEPia consumes power only on redraw, not for the display of a continuous image and Fujitsu claims battery life of 40 hours, though wi-fi will no doubt shorten that. The FLEPia is a little bigger and heavier than the Kindle 2, and the screen takes up to 8 seconds to refresh at 260,000 colors, so you better not be in a hurry. Even at lower color settings screen refresh rates are slow.
FLEPia comes with a trio of body color choices: white pearl, pink pearl and silver. The unit also comes with a stylus. There is no word yet when or if it will be available outside of Japan. The ebook formats it now uses are primarily used in Japan.
The FLEPia has other capabilities in addition to reading books: it comes with Windows CE 5. This means support for e-mail, internet and document handling. These capabilities potentially raise the FLEPia to a level somewhere between Amazon’s Kindle 2 and more powerful computing devices such as laptops.
E-ink, used in Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s readers, will probably not be available in color until the end of 2010 at the earliest; more likely 2011. iRex, maker of the iLiad ereaders, has also promised a color model by 2011, and in addition claims that their device’s display will be three times brighter than existing color displays.
Probably the greatest significance of the Flepia is that it is a first step towards the next generation of color ebook readers, and provides incentive for other manufacturers to ready their color devices.
